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Down Home Dixie
Pamela Browning
Fresh from reenacting a Civil War battle, Kyle Sherman, dressed in his Union uniform, is lost in Yewville, South Carolina.Dixie Lee Smith knows such a man should be treated as the enemy–shunned, or at the very least ignored. But with no Southern gentlemen pounding down her door, Dixie finds herself wondering if maybe the state of their potential "union" should be addressed.And once she discovers there's competition for Kyle, this particular rebel belle stops worrying about which side won the war, determined to win the handsome Yankee for herself. She's got a battle on her hands for sure. Because Kyle himself might not be so easy to subdue!
Don’t do this, he told himself. Stop it
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
Down Home Dixie
Pamela Browning
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter One
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.
While Dixie tried to figure out what to do, the Yankee dropped his keys. Right at her feet. And bent over in an attempt to retrieve them only to straighten in pain, giving a little moan.
She picked up the keys. It seemed the polite thing, and besides, she hated to see anyone in pain.
“I’d better not drive,” he said unsteadily. “Is there a taxi service?”
“I wish.”
“A boardinghouse? Anything?”
She tried to think. “The only boardinghouse closed when the last Pankey sister died.”
“I could sleep in the back of my truck. I have a sleeping bag,” he said.
“Our local police chief tends to hustle vagrants out of town real fast.”
The soldier leaned against his truck and closed his eyes. They were several lovely shades of golden brown, putting her in mind of autumn leaves floating on the tea-colored water of Sycamore Branch. His hair, at least what she could see of it peeking out from under the cap, was a gingery color, or maybe chestnut depending on the amount of light glinting through the trees. He was a handsome guy if you didn’t mind the sharpness of his nose.
Dixie wondered at the wisdom of getting involved in this situation.
“Look, uh, sir,” she said. “I could ask my friend Bubba if you can stay in his spare room.”
“Anything,” the soldier said. “Anything at all.”
He recognized her indecision for what it was and looked her straight in the eye. “I promise I’m harmless, and I’ve never been in trouble with the law,” he said, adding, “except for a parking ticket when I was seventeen.”
Dixie whipped out her cell phone. “Bubba, would you consider renting your spare room for the night?” Bubba had recently married, but before that, he’d endured a succession of boarders in the second bedroom of his small brick house.
“You got to be kidding,” Bubba said. A television set provided background roars, which let Dixie know that Bubba was watching a NASCAR race on TV.
“I’m not joking,” Dixie said with the utmost seriousness. “I have a man in need here, and the Magnolia Motel is full.”
“Listen, Dixie, I always like to help someone out, but my old coon dog and her new puppies are occupying the spare bedroom at present.” A pause. “Hey, did you hear that?”
“I maybe heard a tire blowing out.”
“That was no tire. That was the caps popping off the beer I made.”
“You make beer now? Is that legal?”
“As long as it’s for my own consumption.”
Dixie opened her mouth to ask why the bottle caps were popping, but Bubba was back to business. “Sorry, Dixie, but I really can’t take on a guest right now. My bride wouldn’t take kindly to the intrusion. Katie’s pregnant, in case you haven’t heard.”
“Yes, she told me. Congratulations,” Dixie said, but Bubba and Katie’s news hit hard. With so many of her friends already married and having babies, Dixie was convinced that life was passing her by. She deserved a husband. She deserved a family. But when was it going to happen for her? Soon, if she had anything to say about it. That’s why she’d embarked on a self-improvement program that included teeth whitening.
“Well,” she said to the Yankee after she clicked off, “that didn’t work out.” To say the least.
“I’m sorry to be so much trouble,” the soldier said apologetically. “I have an overblown reaction to anesthetics sometimes. Since Dr. Johnson isn’t my regular dentist, I suspect he gave me more than I can handle.” He spoke with a Midwestern accent, certainly not Southern. Which, Dixie supposed, was to be expected. No self-respecting Southern man would ever entertain wearing that uniform, reenactor or not.
Still, he was counting on her, and Dixie wasn’t prepared to give up. “Just one more phone call, okay? This one in private.”
The soldier only stared.
“Are you going to be all right standing there?” she asked him.
“Maybe not. I’m going to sit down on that bench.” He navigated sideways to a white wrought iron bench situated beside a forsythia bush in full bloom.
She waited until he sat and cautioned, “You’d better drop your head between your legs. You look a bit puny.”
He seemed as if he’d pass out any moment. She steadied him by holding his arm, figuring that even if he was Jack the Ripper, he was in no condition to do her any harm. After a time, he lifted his head. “Wow,” he said wonderingly. “I felt as if I was going to faint.”
She released his arm as soon as he rallied but not before noting the firm bulge of muscle beneath the blue fabric. She hadn’t wrapped her hands around a muscle like that since the local National Guard unit shipped out to the Middle East. It occurred to her that she wouldn’t mind feeling this one again under the right circumstances.
“Like I said, I need to make another call,” she told him before hurrying to her car. Keeping a watchful eye on the Yankee, who continued to sit hunched on the hard bench with his elbows balanced on his knees, she dialed her friend Jasper Beasley, Yewville police chief, and recited the number on the truck’s Ohio license tag.
“I’ll run the tag, see what I can find,” Jasper promised, not even asking her why she needed the information. Dixie and Jasper went all the way back to the first day of kindergarten when he’d smashed her flat in the school yard at recess and then picked her up, dusted her off and offered her a moon pie. They’d remained good friends.
Dixie waited in the car, observing the Yankee from a safe distance. Those uniform sleeves were a bit short, exposing thick wrists and large meaty hands. He had a mole on his left cheek, kind of sexy. His hair tended to curl at the back of his neck, and she wished he’d take off that danged cap so she could study the shape of his head. Her grandmother’s belief was that you could divine a lot about a man from the shape of his head; a high forehead meant an intellectual bent, a rounded curve at the back of the crown meant more room for a brain to develop, and a pointy head—well, Memaw Frances always cautioned not to get involved with one of those.
Her phone played the crazy ka-ching ka-ching cash-register ring that she’d chosen after starting to work full-time as a real estate agent.
“Dixie, that license tag comes up clean,” Jasper told her. “The vehicle is registered to Kyle T. Sherman of Ledbetter, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. No priors, no record of any kind.”
“All right,” she said, eyeing the Yankee. He didn’t seem like a Kyle. He looked more like a Brian to her, or a Scott, but he wasn’t responsible for the name his parents gave him any more than she was for being named Dixie Lee. Kyle was a decent name, hunky but not overbearing, trendy without being funky.
“Anything else I can do for you?” Jasper asked.
“No, that’s all for now. Thanks, Jasper. Tell Lori I said hi.”
“Sure will. When you coming over for dinner again?”
“Next time Lori makes Brunswick stew,” she told him.
“She’ll call you. I got to shoot a mess of squirrels first.”
They hung up, and Dixie slid out of the car.
At her approach, the Yankee lifted his head as though he’d been run over by a tractor. The only thing he lacked was tread marks.
“Come on,” Dixie said brusquely. “I’m taking you home with me.”
“Don’t wanna be any trouble,” he said. “I’m a little wobbly at the moment, that’s all.”
“You can sleep in my cottage,” she said, not adding that it had once been a child’s playhouse. She’d stored plant containers there with the intention of using the building for a potting shed, but right now it could provide shelter.
“Is it all right to leave my truck here?”
“Doc Johnson probably won’t mind.”
“My name’s Kyle Sherman,” the soldier said after he folded himself into the passenger side of the Mustang. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”
“No problem,” she assured him, though she had her misgivings. It was ingrained in her to be hospitable to strangers. She couldn’t imagine walking away and leaving him sitting outside the dentist’s office when he had no place to stay.
“You haven’t told me your name,” he reminded her.
“Dixie Lee Smith,” she said without elaborating. She could have told him that she’d lived in Yewville all her life, that her house was only ten minutes outside of town, that she’d bought it as a fixer-upper and moved in less than a week ago. She aimed a covert glance at the Yankee. His jaw was solid, and if Memaw’s theories held true, this bespoke a strong character. He had square teeth that put her in mind of an advertisement for Chiclets, and his ears, though partly hidden beneath the cap, were rather large. He was cleanly shaven, which was all to the good, since she’d never been partial to facial hair. She believed that sometimes men who grew a mustache or a beard had something to hide, like a short upper lip or a weak chin. That was not the case with Kyle Sherman.
An odd thought occurred to her, but she brushed it away. Sherman was not a respected name around here, considering that General William Tecumseh Sherman’s men had swept through South Carolina in 1864, burning the state capital only seventy miles away and pillaging Yewville and other small towns after their famous march to the sea.
She hoped this reenactor was not related to that Sherman. Lordy, if he was, and if the ladies of the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy ever found out she was assisting him, she could forget about joining the chapter, even though her grandmother was one of its most respected members.
“Uh-oh, I’m going to be sick,” Kyle said. His face had gone a peculiar shade of green.
She pulled over, lurching onto the shoulder of the road just in time for him to wrench open the door and upchuck into a tangle of briars.
He leaned back into the car. “Sorry,” he said.
Wordlessly she handed him a bottle of water from the cache she kept on the back seat. He drank, wiped his face with a handkerchief and inhaled a deep breath.
“I swear, I’ve never felt so awful,” he said. “Is it far to your place?”
Embarrassed for him, she shook her head. “Just a few more minutes.”
As he slumped back into his corner, Dixie eased the Mustang back onto the road and mashed hard on the accelerator, not caring in the least if she exceeded the speed limit.
“Do you always drive this fast?” he asked.
“When someone in my car is sick, yes.”
He didn’t comment, and she reached home in record time. She braked to a stop beside the old playhouse.
Kyle got out of the car before she asked if she could help him. “The fresh air clears my head,” he explained, inhaling deeply several times.
“How’s your stomach?” she asked.
“Better now.” He’d regained some color, and he sounded stronger.
“Follow me.”
The playhouse had been there for years, the children who had once enjoyed it long gone. The path was overgrown with encroaching azalea bushes, the rough-hewn arched door almost obscured by drooping vines. Her guest had to duck his head and shoulders to enter.
The structure was a one-room affair with a cramped bathroom. A real kitchen ranged along one wall, though everything in it was only three-quarter size, and a narrow cot was squeezed into the space under a round window.
“A Hobbit house?” Kyle mused as she shoved aside several flowerpots and a bag of potting soil.
“Not quite,” she said, though the description was apt. “At least it’s a place to sleep. I’ll run over to the house and bring back sheets and pillows.”
While she was speaking, he inspected the cot and lifted the quilt. “It already has sheets,” he declared. He sat down heavily, making the springs squeak and releasing a slightly musty odor. “I’m still pretty weak,” he offered in explanation.
She’d figured that out for herself. “Be right back,” she told him.
Since she’d just moved in, she wasn’t nearly settled. Still, her new house never failed to lift her spirits when she approached it. The house had been built haphazardly, one section at a time, which resulted in odd doors, unplanned niches and dormers inserted in unlikely places, but the result was pleasant. The back door opened into the kitchen. Beyond it was a hall leading to a sewing room and the front-door foyer. The adjacent living room was still piled high with boxes. Upstairs were three bedrooms. The house was too big for her. However, the previous owners had been eager to sell for much lower than their asking price and she’d never been one to pass up a bargain.
When she returned with the towels, an ice bag for his swelling jaw and a few other things he might need, Kyle Sherman had tucked himself neatly into bed. The stained Yankee uniform was draped over one of the small chairs, and she had the suspicion that he was naked under the quilt. Certainly his chest, with boldly defined pectorals and a light dusting of dark hair, was impressive, and as far as she could tell, so was the rest of him. He took up most of the width of the cot, which kept her from thinking what it would be like to occupy it beside him.
Where had that idea come from, anyway? She shouldn’t be musing about sharing a stranger’s bed, but perhaps such startling fantasies were to be expected now that all the eligible men were in the military or deployed with the National Guard or out of work. Ever since Yewville Mills, the town’s main industry, had up and moved to Mexico, good men were hard to find.
And hard men were good to find, as Mae West had once said. Dixie pulled herself away from that line of reflection.
“I brought you a few bottles of water,” she said briskly as she set them on the table. “And a Thermos of iced tea. It’s sweetened, not like you drink it up north. You can share whatever my dinner turns out to be.” Her sore gums felt like a pincushion at present and would determine what she could eat. Likely that was his problem, as well.
“Thank you,” he said, studying her as if seeing her for the first time. “Like I said, I really appreciate this. I’ve heard about Southern hospitality, but this is way over the top.”
“You’ll feel okay by tomorrow,” she said. “Your color is better already.”
“I’m a lot more comfortable now that I’m lying down.”
“That’s good,” she replied. He didn’t have a pointy head, a development that pleased her greatly.
“It was a simple root canal,” he said in bewilderment. “I figured I was lucky to find the only dentist in the whole state who keeps office hours on Saturday and who could work me in on short notice. I called him from the battlefield and he said to come on over. So—”
“What battlefield?”
He didn’t seem to mind the interruption. “Rivervale Bridge. My unit had a reenactment there this weekend. That’s where I got shot. Fake blood to make it more authentic for the audience.”
“That’s disgusting, making a game out of war.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
“I suppose the Union always wins,” she said before she could help herself. Immediately, she regretted her snarkiness. But it was too late though to take it back now.
His eyes crinkled when he smiled. “Not at all,” he said. “I recently took part in a reenactment at Manassas, Virginia, where Johnny Reb trounced us big-time.”
“What happens after these battles? Everybody picks up their guns and goes home?”
“More or less.”
“As opposed to the real thing, where a lot of good men died.” She couldn’t help it. She’d been a participant in too many Confederate Memorial Day ceremonies. Twice, she’d been chosen to lay the wreath on the monument in Memorial Park where the names of several of her forebears were inscribed. And moreover, she’d lost two friends to snipers in Afghanistan, great guys that she would mourn forever. She couldn’t comprehend why reenactors liked to play at war.
It took Kyle a few seconds to answer. When he did, his voice was respectful. “Good men were lost on both sides. And that’s why we reenactors do what we do—to educate people about the hardships of war, one of which is dying. And to commemorate the men who gave up their lives in the conflict.”
His gaze was steady, and she found herself mesmerized by his deep voice. “You see, Dixie, when we reenactors return to where the battle took place, we live the same way as the soldiers who fought. We sleep in tents, shiver in the rain and cook our food over sputtering campfires. We wear the same kind of clothes as they did, constructed out of the same type of fabric. We endure insects and lack of refrigeration. At night, when we miss home and family, we sing their songs. We try to be them, for a few days or even a week.
“Even so, we can’t imagine what it was really like. We’re not going to die out there of dysentery or be captured and sent to a prison and we’re not going to take a musket ball in the gut when the charge is rushing over the hill. At the end of the battle, we’ll go home to a warm bed and decent food and people who love us, as many of those who really fought that battle never could. Why do we do what we do? To remember. To keep them alive in our hearts.”
Dixie had always regarded reenactors as little boys indulging in pointless games. But what Kyle Sherman had described to her bore solemn witness to the lives and deaths of men caught up in the horrible war that had torn the nation asunder, a wrenching conflict that still had a direct bearing on the way many Southerners lived their lives today.
Kyle had captured her imagination, which was altogether too taxing at the moment. She was ready to rush out the door and back to the house. Her hand rested on the doorknob, then she turned back toward him. There was one thing she had to know.
“Your name,” she blurted. “Kyle Sherman. It was General Sherman who earned the hatred of Southerners for all time. His foragers destroyed and pillaged, leaving people in their path, mostly wives and children, with no place to live and nothing to eat.” She paused, trying to figure out if his blank stare meant that he was merely surprised or if it presaged something more severe—anger.
Kyle raised himself on one elbow as Dixie drew a deep breath. “Are you related to General Sherman in any way?” she asked all in a rush.
“Yes,” he said gently. “He was my great-great-great-grandfather.”
She nodded. He was more attractive than she had first discerned, and other than the sharp nose and large ears, he bore little resemblance to those pictures of General William Tecumseh Sherman in the history books. The tiny lamp by the bed illuminated his high cheekbones, dusted his lashes with gold.
She didn’t say any more. Nothing else seemed relevant. She was deeply attracted to this man, to the sheer physicality of him and the soft reasoning way in which he spoke.
As she walked through the night back to the house, she pondered not only what Kyle had revealed about his heritage, which was startling enough to a girl who was Southern-born and –bred, but how he honored the soldiers who had fought and fallen in that long-ago war, and what it meant to him to do so.
Maybe the local United Daughters of the Confederacy chapter would have a hard time understanding how she could shelter a descendant of General William T. Sherman, yet for herself, it was time to let bygones be bygones. She had captured a Yankee, and she was determined to encourage him to stay around as long as he liked.
That decided, the only thing she had to figure out was whether to fix meat loaf or hamburgers for dinner.
Chapter Two
When Kyle Sherman woke up the next morning, he had the impression that he’d fallen down a rabbit hole. He recognized nothing about his charmingly rustic surroundings—not the teeny-tiny green-painted table decoupaged with pictures of kittens, not the tray sitting on the midget kitchen counter and certainly not the woman who was swinging down the path toward the little house.
She was gorgeous. Despite her well-rounded body parts, she was all glide and no jiggle. Her hair bounced around her shoulders, pale blond and gleaming as if spun from sunshine. Her face was a perfect oval, makeup tastefully applied, and she wore a pink dress, the hem of which was caught up at intervals with white ribbons, the better to show off shapely calves. Kyle used to be a boob man; nowadays he was strictly into legs, and this woman’s were spectacular. He’d noticed them right off in the parking lot yesterday.
The memory reminded him how he happened to be here. The battle reenactment at Rivervale Bridge, his toothache, the subsequent root canal and the anesthetic knocking him for a loop. Then, and by far the most pleasant thing about that miserable day, the sweet angel of mercy who had gallantly came to his rescue and who right now was knocking on the quaint door to this Hobbity cottage where he lay naked beneath a quilt pieced of pastel calico.
“Come in,” he said, wishing he’d had time to get dressed. His uniform was neatly spread over two of the teeny-tiny chairs, and he didn’t recall putting it there. Maybe the woman had. He suddenly recalled that her name was Dixie, a perfect appellation for a perfect Southern belle.
“How are you feeling?” she asked, giving the impression that she really cared.
“Better.”
“I’m going to church. When I get back, I’ll take you to get your truck.”
He shook his head in disbelief. “I can’t believe what happened yesterday. I felt as if I was spinning off the end of the world when I was standing there in the parking lot. Thanks for helping me out.”
“Like I said, I was glad to do it. I fixed scrambled eggs, grits and bacon for breakfast. I, um, suppose you’re hungry?”
Because of his overwhelming urge to sleep, he’d barely sampled the meat loaf last night. “I could eat something,” he allowed.
“I’ll bring it out,” she said, though her gaze fell doubtfully on the little table. He glanced out the window where a picnic table stood near the dock extending into the lake.
“How about if I eat outside? It’s such a nice spring morning.” He was in awe of the gorgeous reds of the azaleas, the dogwoods with their ethereal pink and white blossoms, the pale flowers of the ornamental Bradford pear trees trembling gently in the breeze.
As Dixie turned to go, he made a point of glancing at her left hand, though he didn’t usually check. The third finger was ringless, which made him unexpectedly glad. He’d been in an off-and-on relationship with a woman named Andrea for a long time, but it was definitely off at present. Well, make that probably off, considering that she’d been leaving voice messages on his cell phone for the past three days. Not that he could have returned them even if he had the urge. His cell-phone service had been spotty ever since he’d crossed the state line into South Carolina.
He wasn’t on the prowl for a new interest. On the other hand, he’d never met anyone as appealing as Dixie Lee Smith. When she disappeared up the path toward the house, he sprang out of bed. Last night he’d figured that when he woke up he’d feel as he did when he had a bad hangover. He expected to find a straggle-haired stranger staring back at him from the teeny-tiny mirror—hollow of cheek, dull of eye and seriously due for a shave. Aside from a bit of swelling along his jawline, he looked fine except for needing that shave.
Taking heart from his appearance, he hit the shower. Though water pressure was low, the hot water was the right temperature and the soap made satisfying suds. After the makeshift shower arrangements at the battle site, it felt great. He dried himself on fluffy white towels and pulled on the blue uniform pants. He didn’t have a razor or any toiletries with him. He’d left them in his truck.
When he emerged from the bathroom, Dixie was standing at the door. “I set your plate on the picnic table,” she said. “Would you like me to find you a T-shirt?”
“That would be great,” he said. Always the quick comeback. Clever repartee was somehow out of his reach this morning, maybe on most mornings. He wished he had a line of patter guaranteed to get results with women, but he was a little rusty at present.
Dixie hurried away and came back with not only a shirt but a personal-care kit like the ones they provided on long airline flights. She noticed him studying the airline’s logo and gave a little laugh.
“I had that left over from an overnight flight to Rome to visit my sister a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t need the shaving kit,” she said.
“Thanks,” he said, meaning it. He hesitated for a moment, then plunged ahead. “You’re not going to make me eat breakfast alone, are you?”
She seemed disconcerted. “I’m teaching Sunday school today. I can’t be late,” she said after a few seconds’ delay.
“Sorry, I just thought—”
She didn’t let him finish what he was going to say. “I could sit for a few minutes, I guess.”
“I’d like that,” he said. He smiled at her.
While he stayed behind in the playhouse to shave, Dixie perched primly on the end of one of the picnic benches. At his approach, she smiled tentatively. He sat down across from her and lifted the domed cover on his plate. “Just like from room service,” he said with a grin.
“Some restaurant-supply items were in the house along with a whole lot of junk I haven’t managed to throw away yet.”
He mixed the grits with the bacon and a good-size lump of butter as he’d learned to do last week at the Reb reenactors’ camp. Breakfast really tasted good in the fresh morning air. From here he could see more of the house, a large clapboard-and-shingle structure with big windows overlooking a wide lawn. Brick-bordered flower beds, sadly unkempt, were scattered here and there, and an artesian well bubbled into a rock-lined pool nearby. The land, which was dotted with pine and oak trees, sloped gently to the fringe of reeds bordering the wide lake.
“Can you tell me something about this area? I’m not familiar with it,” he said.
“This is Pine Hollow Lake,” Dixie told him. “You’re in the sand hills of South Carolina. Many centuries ago, the Atlantic Ocean, which is now ninety miles to the east of us, rose right up to the ridge over there in the distance. When the nuclear plant was built here, Blue Creek was dammed to flood the hollow and that created the lake.”
“There’s a nuclear plant?”
She nodded and pointed out a distant white plume of smoke. “Way over there.”
“What was in the hollow before they flooded it?”
“There’re whole farms and houses down there under the water. It’s kind of eerie, isn’t it?”
He nodded and took another bite of grits. “What happened to the people?” he asked.
“The electric company paid them well for their land and relocated them. I can’t say some of them were too happy about it, from what I’ve heard. Well, that’s progress.”
He considered what it must have been like for those folks to see their homes covered with water. He shook his head.
“Maybe progress isn’t always good,” he said.
She shrugged. “Without it, where would I be? Developers are building on the other side of the lake now, and I’m selling expensive homes to retirees who have recently discovered the area.”
“That’s what you do? Real estate?”
“I’m in sales, and I’ve discovered that I’m good at it. I’ll take the exam for my broker’s license as soon as possible, and then, who knows? I could own a business someday.” She stood up and brushed a dried leaf off her dress. “Sorry, I’ve got to run. One thing about our pastor, he starts services on time.”
“I understand,” Kyle said, smiling up at her.
“See you later,” she said, and he watched as she walked toward the garage. She had a bounce to her step and a sway to her hips that was most fetching.
Stop it, he told himself.
You could get to know more about her, said a wee small voice inside him, though he wasn’t sure it would be wise to heed its counsel. On the other hand, what if it was time for a new life, new friends, a new perspective?
He finished his breakfast as he thoughtfully gazed out over the lake where cattails swayed gently in the breeze and a lone sailboat was tacking toward the far shore. In Ohio, spring had yet to be sprung, flowers had yet to bloom, and in some places, snow had yet to melt. Back home he had an apartment, a dracaena that needed watering and a landlady who insisted on mothering him. At the moment, the most important thing seemed to be the dracaena, which ought to tell him something about himself, his life and what he planned to do with it.
Back home was a situation that he was loath to face, but he wasn’t ready to admit that yet even to himself. And so he daydreamed of buying a sailboat of his own and sailing it across Pine Hollow Lake without a care in the world and with a charming woman by his side.
She looked a lot like Dixie Lee Smith, but she could have been anybody. Anybody he didn’t know.
WHEN DIXIE ARRIVED home from church, Kyle was weeding the flower beds.
She didn’t notice him as she parked her Mustang in the detached garage, but as she walked toward the house, she stopped short at the sight of him wearing old khaki shorts that he’d found in a box labeled Church Charity Closet. The box had held other garments, none of which appeared as if they’d fit Dixie—a pair of boys’ overalls, baby things, children’s winter coats.
She stood there, hands on her hips and head cocked to one side. “Why, Kyle Sherman!” she exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing?”
“Work that needs to be done.” He straightened and smiled at her, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.
“I certainly didn’t expect you to hire on as my yard man,” she said, but it was clear that she was pleased. She walked around the flower bed, studying it. “I plan to plant marigolds here, all colors,” she said.
“That would be pretty,” he said. “I figured that in this climate, you might be ready for planting.”
“It’ll be soon, but I’m not much of a gardener. My sister, Carrie, used to have the most beautiful plantings all around the home place. That’s where she lived before she got married. She and her husband claim they’re going to take up residence there, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they do.”
“That’s the sister who lives in Rome?”
“She’s only visiting there while her husband is on location. She’s married to Luke Mason, the movie star. She met him when he was filming a movie here.”
“I never knew anyone who married a movie star.”
“It took everyone in our family by surprise.”
Kyle knelt again, determined to finish this job before she made him leave. “I figure we can go get my truck after I’m through here. If you have time, I mean.”
“I drove past the dentist’s office on my way home from church. That sure is a different-looking truck you have, all that chrome and the boxy shape of it.”
It wasn’t the first time someone had been curious about the truck, a modified pickup. “I’m a farrier,” he said.
“A what?”
“A horseshoer. I shoe horses. I carry equipment with me. Forge, anvil, grinders, horseshoes, things like that.”
She appeared intrigued. “You’re the first farrier I’ve ever met. Where do you work?”
“I have my own business and service stable horses, pets, a few mules here and there. I love what I do, and it fits in well with my hobby. I take care of the cavalry horses at the reenactments.”
Dixie sat on a nearby tree stump. “Some of the things you said last night about reenactments—they touched me,” she said. “Though I could do without your being related to General Sherman.”
He glanced at her briefly, but kept weeding, tossing uprooted plants into an old bushel basket. “If it’s any comfort, my great-grandfather was never formally acknowledged by the Sherman family. He was the illegitimate child of the general’s unmarried son and took the Sherman name only after his father died.”
“Oh. Is that a sore point?”
“Not to me, but you won’t find our branch of the family on any genealogical charts.”
She thought that over for a moment. “Um, where can I go to a reenactment?”
“In Camden there’s an excellent one every fall. It’s a Revolutionary War reenactment, so I don’t participate, but you might enjoy it.”
“The battle of Camden…didn’t the Americans lose that one?”
He grinned. “I’m afraid so. You’re up on your history lessons.”
“I won a medal in eighth grade for the highest average in middle-school history courses. I was proud of it.”
He stood up, surveyed the flower bed. He’d eliminated the weeds, but it still needed edging. “That’s a whole lot better. I’d be glad to clear the weeds out of the other beds for you.”
“Aren’t we going to drive downtown to get your truck?”
“Well, sure.” He leaned back, hands on his hips. “It’s just that I don’t really need to be anyplace special right away. I have another guy covering my business for me back in Ohio. In fact, I’d like to ride around the horse country near Camden, and if you’re agreeable, maybe we could barter a few more days’ lodging in your cottage for my work around the place.”
“Yankee, you’ve got a deal.”
He reached out his hand to shake hers then quickly withdrew it when he realized his was too dirty to touch anything but more weeds. “I guess I’d better take another shower,” he said ruefully.
“Okay, I’m going to change clothes. I’ll be going on to my grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner.” She hesitated, clearly unsure of her ground. “You could come with me if you like. It’s nothing fancy, just a simple family meal, but you’ll leave well fed.”
“I’d like that,” he said slowly. “I’d like it a lot.”
Dixie aimed a smile at him, one that could knock a man over at twenty paces. Her skirt swung with a flirtatious flip as she started toward the house. “Be ready in half an hour, and I’ll tell Memaw that there’ll be one extra. We’ll go get your truck first and drop it off here on our way to her house.” She stopped and frowned, half turning around. “Another thing,” she added. “While we’re there, don’t tell anyone your last name.” She disappeared into the house, the door shutting firmly behind her.
What the heck does she mean, don’t tell anyone your last name? Kyle wondered as he hefted the basket of weeds. Still puzzling over it, he went to check his cell phone. It still hadn’t revived, but that was okay. Suddenly he didn’t feel a need to be connected, and that was a freeing feeling. Whistling, he went inside to take a shower.
WHEN THEY WENT into town to retrieve Kyle’s truck, Dixie put the top down on her convertible. Her hair ruffled in the wind, and they passed countless fields readied for spring planting. Dixie drove a little too fast for Kyle’s taste, but she was a competent driver and he didn’t object.
At the dentist’s parking lot, she was curious to inspect his truck. “The cargo area’s built on the chassis of a regular pickup,” Kyle explained. “The sides and back open upward so I can get to my equipment.”
He flipped up the rear hatch. “This makes shade where I stand to work if there isn’t a tree or barn around.” He also opened the sides, which lifted up like wings, so she could see the variety of horseshoes stacked on “trees” expressly made for that purpose. Racks and compartments held rasps and nails. He kept his equipment scrupulously neat and clean, and Dixie seemed impressed.
“Maybe I’ll get to watch you shoe a horse someday,” she said.
“Maybe you will,” he told her, liking the idea.
They dropped his truck off next to the sasanqua hedge beside her driveway, and Kyle slid back into the passenger side of the car. He wasn’t quite sure what to expect at this gathering of the Smith clan, so Dixie explained about her family as they drove into the countryside.
“Our branch of Smiths have resided in the area since before the American Revolution,” she told him. “Several of my ancestors fought in the War Between the States. Their names are engraved on the base of the statue of the Confederate soldier in Memorial Park downtown.”
This was apparently the root of Dixie’s reluctance to mention his last name to her family. Kyle didn’t understand; generations had lived and died since the end of the Civil War. People should be over it. Still, twenty-nine years ago, because that’s how old she said she was, someone had named this woman Dixie Lee to commemorate an ill-fated nation and its greatest general, Robert E. Lee.
Dixie kept talking. “Memaw Frances is my paternal grandmother. My daddy died some years ago of heart disease, and Mama was just plain prostrate with grief. Then, in a worst-case scenario, she suffered a fatal embolism shortly after we lost Daddy. I’ve no lack of relatives, so I have a large extended family. What my sister and I would have done without them, I can’t imagine.”
Kyle, whose father had retired to the Florida Keys where he earned a marginal living as a fishing guide and whose mother had run off with a magazine salesman not long after he was born, knew little about big families and said so.
“Why, I can’t imagine not getting everyone together on Sundays like we do,” she said with honest astonishment. “What on earth do you do instead?”
Kyle couldn’t really answer that. Sunday was just like any other day to him, only there were a lot more sports programs on TV. Sometimes Andrea stayed over, and they’d go out for breakfast, or he’d get together with his reenactor friends. He’d never considered that he was missing anything.
Along the way, Dixie pointed out the Smith family’s old home place, a large Victorian house that belonged to her sister, Carrie, and her husband. About a quarter of a mile down the road, Frances Smith lived in a sprawling brick rancher at the end of a long driveway winding through a pecan grove.
He followed Dixie into the house. A picture of Ronald Reagan hung beside the door and a well-worn Bible lay on the hall table. Dixie’s grandmother looked to be a spry eighty. The guests included Dixie’s cousin Voncille, an ample-size redhead with a hearty laugh and a husband who barely spoke a word. The husband’s name was Skeeter, and he and Voncille had four children, stair steps named Paul, Liddy, Amelia and Petey.
Claudia, Frances’s sister, who was hard of hearing, had brought her unmarried son, Jackson, who immediately pulled Kyle aside and asked him if he liked to watch pornographic movies. Another male relative named Estill, hollow of chest and bald of head, lurked on the outskirts of the group, and Kyle had no idea what his relation was to anybody else, nor did anyone explain it.
The children were all extremely handsome and reasonably well behaved, excluding the younger girl, Amelia, who kept wailing that she wanted a Tootsie Roll, and right now, please. No one paid any attention to her. Kyle considered suggesting that he run to the nearest convenience store and buy her the Tootsie Roll just to shut her up, then decided that if her parents didn’t care about her whining, he should try to get used to it.
After he brushed off the question from Jackson about the porn movies, Kyle tried to stick close to Dixie, which meant that he was recruited to snap the ends off green beans while she fried the chicken. Memaw Frances busied herself mashing potatoes by hand, and once she’d eliminated all the lumps to her satisfaction, she dug around in the pantry for pickled okra that she never found.
“Memaw didn’t make pickled okra last year,” Voncille whispered to Dixie and Kyle on her way to the refrigerator to pour juice for Petey. “She keeps forgetting is all.”
Frances’s big lace-covered walnut table provided plenty of room for everyone, and it was set with fine china and crystal. Dixie seemed to take everything in stride, including being seated next to the profoundly deaf Claudia, who had to be told everything twice, even if it was only to please pass the salt. Kyle was seated on Frances’s right, which meant that he had to endure a spate of tough questions while steering her away from queries about his name. Not only that, Dixie had also suggested quite strongly that he not mention the reenactment at Rivervale Bridge or the fact that he’d worn a blue Yankee uniform.
Kyle didn’t like to meet Dixie’s family or anyone else and not be able to tell them who he was, but he honored her request. That wasn’t difficult to do when he recalled that while riding in the car with her to get his truck a while ago, her hand had so softly brushed his arm as she reached to slide the key into the ignition. His skin had crinkled into goose bumps at her touch and he wondered what would happen if their skin made contact again.
“YOU’RE FROM WHERE, CAL?” Claudia shouted across the table, knotting her face into a frown that rolled lines of pink powder from wrinkle to wrinkle.
“OHIO,” he shouted back, unsure whether to correct Claudia’s pronunciation of his name.
“And then I told her, �Hon, I’m not going to any shower for the daughter of a woman who cut me dead when Skeeter and I had to get married,’” Voncille was telling Dixie.
“Can I have more chicken?” asked Paul, and Voncille forked a drumstick onto his plate without losing a beat in her monologue.
“You ever heard of Linda Lovelace?” Jackson asked Estill, who remained bowed over his plate and kept spooning mashed potatoes into his mouth, which appeared deficient in teeth.
“And your mother’s maiden name was what?” Frances asked Kyle with interest.
“Oh, you wouldn’t know his people, Memaw,” Dixie volunteered hastily. “By the way, this is the best cranberry relish you’ve ever made.”
“Let me tell you how I make it so you can do it yourself. I take my food grinder—that’s the old crank one that Mama had when she first married—and I wash the cranberries real good, getting all the dirt and leaves off. Then I—”
“I intended to send a present, but right off I changed my mind, money being tight and Skeeter being jobless again,” Voncille said. “Maybe I’ll just mail a card after the baby’s born, whether Jenny gets married or not.”
“Listen, dumbhead, stop kicking me under the table,” Liddy told her brother, who reached for the creamed corn and managed to spill it down the front of his shirt, whereupon Skeeter, his father, sent him to the bathroom to clean it off.
“You grind up the nuts medium-coarse, and pecans are best,” Frances went on. “Lord knows I’ve got enough pecans from my trees, that is, if the squirrels don’t get them all.”
“Did you say you were from Iowa?” Voncille asked Kyle politely.
“Get all the little pieces of shell off the nuts before you grind them. You could break a tooth otherwise.”
Kyle kept munching on his third piece of fried chicken. He’d heard that Southerners really had a way with fried chicken, but he wouldn’t have believed it could be so light and crispy.
“They’ve got this back room at the video store, it’s for adults only,” Jackson was telling Skeeter enthusiastically.
Voncille shot a warning glance in his direction and addressed him in an undertone that everyone heard anyway. “Jackson, there are children present. Please talk about something else.”
“I didn’t get any mashed potatoes, Mom. Can you put gravy on? Who’s Linda Lovelace?” Paul asked.
“Kyle shoes horses. It’s what he does for a living,” Dixie explained to someone, Kyle wasn’t sure who.
“HE SHOOTS HORSES? WHAT KIND OF JOB IS THAT?” Claudia asked, and Kyle almost choked on a mouthful of iced tea.
“Kyle shoes horses, Aunt Claudia,” Liddy said in her loudest voice.
Frances blinked off into the distance for a moment. “I had a horse when I was a child. His name was Booster. Now, how come I can remember that horse’s name when I can’t even recall where I put the pickled okra?”
“I carry everything I need for shoeing a horse around in my truck,” Kyle told Liddy who stared at him entranced.
“The horse, too?”
“No, not the horse, the horseshoes and the equipment I use to attach the shoes to their hooves.”
“Daddy, when can I have a Tootsie Roll?” Amelia chimed in.
“Hush up, Amelia.”
“You use big long nails, right?”
“Does it hurt the horse?” Paul asked.
“And then I fold in the cranberries, just so.”
“Uncle Estill, would you like to go to the video store with me sometime? Next week, maybe?” Jackson asked despite a glare from Voncille. Still gumming mashed potatoes, Estill gave no sign that he’d heard.
“I KNEW SOME KALBS OVER NEAR LAURENS,” Claudia shouted. “A BIG FAMILY. THEY OWNED A CAR DEALERSHIP.”
“No relation,” Kyle said.
“And then all you have to do is put it in the refrigerator and eat it,” Frances said, though Kyle was sure that by this time, no one was listening.
It went on like this until all the fried chicken and mashed potatoes were gone, which was when Voncille pushed back her chair. “Well, I guess we’re all finished eating. Is anyone ready for fudge cake? I brought one along.”
Estill raised his head and spoke for the first time. “I’d like some cake, Vonnie, but first I’ll have some of that pickled okra. Can you mash it up real good?”
“I told you, Estill, I couldn’t find the pickled okra,” Frances said with great patience.
“Come on out to the kitchen, Memaw, I’ll help you search for it,” Liddy said comfortably as she slid off her chair. She took Frances’s hand and the two of them disappeared.
Kyle caught Dixie’s eye and was surprised to recognize an amused glint there. He smiled back, and she shrugged lightly as if to say she couldn’t help it, this was her family and she loved them.
Though he was lacking in family himself, her attitude struck Kyle as really important. Some people would be embarrassed by the carryings on and eccentricities of the people involved. However, Dixie had made it plain that she was not. Maybe more than anything else, Kyle liked this about her.
WHEN THE TWO OF THEM arrived back at Dixie’s place after dinner, Kyle wished she wouldn’t go inside right away. He had no desire to spend the rest of the evening alone contemplating the sexual sparks that seemed to fly between them.
“I had a good time,” he said. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“Oh, we’re a fun bunch, all right,” Dixie said with an amused laugh. “Life wouldn’t be the same without my family especially now that my sister’s moved away.” She seemed pensive as she pulled a jacket closer around her in order to fend off the cool night wind that soughed through the pine trees.
Impulse took over, making him bolder. “Let’s walk out on the dock and you can tell me how your sister happened to marry Luke Mason,” he said. He liked Luke Mason’s movies, which generally consisted of snappy dialogue, an attractive cast and a couple of improbable car chases. Plus, a discussion down on the dock might lead to something far more interesting.
He was delighted when Dixie said, “If you like,” though he cautioned himself against getting his hopes up. They walked together across the grass, past the flower bed he’d cleared earlier and onto the dock. Several loose boards could use nailing down, he noticed in the light of the full moon, and certainly one or two needed to be replaced.
When they reached the dock’s end, they leaned companionably side by side on the railing where the moon path on the water rippled toward the opposite shore. The air was fragrant with the scent of green growing things and another indefinable fragrance that Kyle suspected was Dixie’s shampoo.
“Would you really like to hear about my sister and Luke Mason?” she asked.
“Of course,” he replied easily. Suddenly it seemed as if everything about her interested him.
With a wistful half smile she said, “Carrie and Luke Mason are a love story that was meant to be. She didn’t figure it out right away, it took her a while. Oh, when she realized—well, she blossomed. Bloomed.”
Kyle was slightly uncomfortable with this topic because love had certainly never done that for him, but he’d rather not destroy Dixie’s romantic notions. He wasn’t required to comment, however, because she went on talking.
“Luke Mason was here to film a movie, Dangerous. It’ll be released next summer. It’s about our local stock-car-racing hero, Yancey Goforth, and how he came out of nowhere to become one of the greatest race-car drivers of all time.”
“I’ve read something about the movie. Doesn’t it have a more serious plot than his earlier films?”
“Carrie says he may be nominated for an Academy Award, it’s that good.”
“He’s an underrated actor, in my opinion.”
“They filmed part of the movie in Smitty’s, my sister’s garage, because it offered the ambience of the era when Yancey was getting started in stock-car racing. In fact, Yancey and my grandfather were friends. A couple of weeks before Carrie signed a contract with the movie company, I tried to talk her into converting the garage into a real estate office so we could go into business together, but she refused. Our dad left her the garage and the home place and me enough money to take a real estate course and put a down payment on my house.”
“How can your sister keep her business if she’s married to a movie star?”
“She sold Smitty’s to her mechanic. She retired so she could travel with Luke, and she wants to bear his children.” This was said dramatically, though Dixie was smiling. “Who wouldn’t?” she added wryly.
“You’ve got a point there,” he agreed.
“How about you, Kyle? Ever been married? Have any children?”
He shook his head. “No, unfortunately.” The last angry quarrel with Andrea two weeks ago still rankled; she’d informed him that even if they got married, which according to her was most unlikely, she didn’t want kids.
Dixie gazed out over the water, and he began to suspect that she didn’t discuss personal things with strangers. Why she’d chosen to so honor him, he couldn’t imagine, but something inside him opened to her.
“I’ve never been married, either,” she said. “I wish—but you don’t need to hear about that.”
In his time, Kyle had lent an ear to women who bemoaned the fact that they weren’t getting any younger but hadn’t found the right partner yet and to several others who belatedly wished they’d borne children in marriages that had ended in divorce. Usually he tried to steer them away from the topic. However, with Dixie, he was eager to learn more.
“Try me,” he said, gazing down at her.
“I could have married young, to my high-school boyfriend. I sent Milo away, and he never came back.” She seemed pensive but stoic in the manner of someone who had given a great deal of consideration to whether she’d done the right thing.
“That’s too bad,” he said automatically, but was it?
“A marriage between us would have been a disaster,” she said.
“That depends on if you’d been able to grow together,” Kyle suggested mildly.
Dixie slanted a glance up at him. “Do you consider that important? Learning and growing with a life partner, I mean?”
“Of course,” he answered, unable and unwilling to stop himself. “Shared experiences are the glue that holds two people together.”
Dixie leaned closer, which might have been by accident or design, he couldn’t tell which. Or maybe the rough railing was sticking a splinter into her arm, a distinct possibility if a person wasn’t careful.
She easily resumed the thread of conversation. “Take my cousin Voncille and her husband, Skeeter, for instance. They got married when she was seventeen, and she dropped out of school to work until their baby was born. She’ll tell you herself that when they started out, she had a lot to learn about marriage and children. Even though they don’t have much money, there’s a lot of love in that family. Together Voncille and Skeeter are both better people than they would have been apart.”
Kyle didn’t often get the chance to state his own opinions about relationships and how they worked. He usually left that to someone else. But if he had been in the habit of saying what he wanted or needed from a woman, he would have said that two people together should be halves of one whole. That each of them should help the other become the best person he or she could be. Dixie’s understanding of this principle not only surprised him, it validated his thinking. He was silent for so long that Dixie studied him out of the corner of her eye for a long moment before speaking.
“I haven’t said anything to offend you, have I?” she ventured.
He cleared his throat. “No.”
“For a while there, I wondered.”
“I, uh, well. Of course I’m not offended,” he said. Where have you been all my life? he was thinking.
He liked her way too much, and maybe she was assuming things that she shouldn’t. He wasn’t ready to enmesh himself in another situation where there was no getting out, yet he was thirty-two years old and ready to settle down.
Dixie was gazing up at him, the moon reflected in her blue, blue eyes, her eyelashes casting feathery shadows across her cheeks. He longed to run his hands under her sweet-smelling hair, press his body close to hers and whisper her name softly in her ear. Don’t do this, he told himself. Stop it. Don’t. Not that any relevant part of him was listening.
Dixie 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, even though she knew nothing about him other than what he’d seen fit to relate.
“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 Dixie Lee Smith into his arms and kissed her.
Chapter Three
Dixie’s desk was situated at the very front of the Yewville Real Estate Company’s office where she could watch people walking past and greet them when they came in. That’s because she had started out as an administrative assistant to Jim Terwilliger, the broker in charge, and his wife, Mayzelle, who liked to help out around the office too often to suit everyone else. Mayzelle meant well and had a kind heart, everyone agreed. They just could do with a good bit less of her advice and company.
Right now Mayzelle was on the phone with Glenda at the Curly Q Beauty Salon discussing what to do about her botched hair color, which was supposed to be Desert Dream, but had turned out more like Copper Kettle. She was trying to talk Glenda into working her in immediately.
“Maybe Rose Inglett would switch with me? She’s done it before when it suits her,” Mayzelle said. “I mean, most people would give anything for my Friday slot?”
Dixie, who was inserting new pages in her listing book, tried to concentrate on her task. It wasn’t easy, considering Mayzelle’s distracting conversation and the fact that last night Dixie had been kissed by possibly the best kisser she’d ever encountered. Who knew that Yankees could kiss like that? It pained her to learn what she’d been missing all these years.
Dixie had done her share of making out in her time, and she’d even had a serious boyfriend or two or three. Well, okay, make that four. First Milo Dingle, the boy she’d been engaged to be engaged to in high school. Then Rob Portner, the guy who delivered firewood to everyone in town. And after that, Thad Ganey, who’d gone and enlisted in the navy. Last, and definitely least, Sam Hodges, who’d run off with Tattin Kelly when they were all staying in a rented condo at the beach last Fourth of July. The thing with Sam still rankled, since he’d neglected to pay his share of the condo rental. Plus, Dixie had loaned Tattin her best beach cover-up for the weekend and never got it back. If she’d known those two had the hots for each other, she’d have made sure Tattin borrowed the cover-up with the peach-juice stain down the front.
“Dixie Lee,” Mayzelle said, interrupting her reverie. “I’m going to run over to Glenda’s for a bit? I should only be an hour or so. You don’t mind answering the phones, do you?”
“No, Mayzelle, you go right ahead.” Anything to get Mayzelle out of the office for a while; she tended to drive everyone crazy with her high voice and the annoying habit of ending almost every sentence with a question mark.
Mayzelle woke Fluffy, her elderly poodle, who slept under her desk, and with the unresisting dog tucked firmly under her arm, she exited the office, leaving Dixie alone.
Dixie intended to write letters to a couple of friends who had shipped out with the Guard unit. As it turned out, all she did was replay last night’s kiss in her mind. She took out a pen and paper. She even addressed the envelopes. Before she had a chance to get started on the letters, the phone rang.
“Dixie,” said her friend Joyanne calling from California where she’d lived ever since getting her big break in the Luke Mason movie and embarking on a new career as an actress. “I only have a minute before I leave for an audition, but I heard Milo Dingle is back in town. Have you seen him yet?”
“No, and I don’t expect I will,” Dixie said, pulling up her e-mail screen on the computer. Sure enough, there were two messages with Milo’s name in the subject line, so the Yewville grapevine was in gear.
“Don’t be so sure. Milo told my cousin Norm’s wife, Betty, that he’s going to renew his acquaintance with you. He asked her to get your phone number.”
“Milo knows where to find me, not that I care,” Dixie said. “Right about the tenth pew, lefthand side, in church every Sunday. In fact, that’s exactly where he left me twelve years ago.”
“Milo didn’t leave you,” Joyanne said. “I distinctly recall that he asked you to marry him shortly after the collection plate passed by, and you said no. Milo was ambivalent about joining his father on the family peach farm so he moved to Kingstree to help his uncle grow daylilies for Wal-Mart is all. Since you declined to go with him, that does not qualify as leaving you.”
“I’ve never regretted my decision.”
“It would have been a beautiful wedding,” Joyanne said wistfully. “All those daylilies.”
“I was ready to go out with other guys,” she told Joyanne, not that this was real news.
“Speaking of guys, have you heard from Sam?”
“Sam the Mooch and Tattin are planning their wedding. They’re having two singers, eight candelabra and a string quartet at the First Baptist Church in Florence.”
“Has Sam paid you his share of the condo rent yet?”
“He never will, the cheapskate. He liked to let me cover the tab at the Eat Right Café, and I filled his SUV with gas more than once. I wonder why I put up with it for so long.”
“It was only a couple of months, Dixie.”
“A couple of months too long. It’s some consolation that Tattin will have to deal with him for the rest of her life.” She paused. “How are things going with you?”
“I’m up for a part in a family drama for the Lifetime channel,” Joyanne said. “It’s a cross between Little House on the Prairie and Little Women.”
“All that �Little,’” Dixie said. “I hope it’s not only a little money.”
“If I get the gig, I’ll be able to buy my own place.”
“Good for you, Joyanne,” Dixie said warmly, finding gig an odd new word in her friend’s vocabulary.
“What’s up with you? Anything important? How did your tooth whitening go?”
“Good. I got two fillings, as well.” She didn’t mention Kyle Sherman.
“Is that the end of your self-improvement program?”
“I’m not sure. Now that I’ve got a new wardrobe for my job, my hair professionally highlighted and my eyeliner tattooed on, I may be through.” Dixie didn’t believe she was vain, exactly, but she was twenty-nine years old and competition for husbands was stiff these days. She’d merely done what she could to maximize her chances in a town where for every hundred females over the age of eighteen, there were only seventy-one males, many of them away in the military or way over the age of sixty.
Joyanne chuckled. “You couldn’t be anything but gorgeous, trust me. Look, I’ve got to run. Talk to you soon, Dixie. Call me if you hear from Milo.”
“Uh-huh.”
They hung up, and Dixie opened her e-mails. One was from Voncille, who had typed a few lines about Skeeter’s running into Milo at the Eat Right that morning. Another was from Milo’s sister, Priss, who invited Dixie to stop by her house for coffee next Saturday. Dixie was quite sure this was no mere coincidence since she hadn’t seen or talked with Priss for ages.
So back to last night. She and Kyle had kissed with the moonlight beaming down so bright it hurt her eyes, which was why she’d closed them as his lips met hers. He had the softest lips. They were firm, too, and he used them to elicit the most exciting sensations. She’d swooned into the kiss, every part of her body primed for more as he used his mouth to tell her how much he wanted her without saying a word. It was a long kiss, that first one, followed by several more, or perhaps it was one kiss broken into several parts because once they’d started neither of them tried to stop. She’d been tipsy only a couple of times in her life, and this reminded her of that loose, dizzy, confused feeling. It was even better though, because instead of falling asleep as she always did after too much to drink, this time, she was fully alert, aroused and ready.
It probably wasn’t the wisest thing in the world to be deeply kissing a man she’d just met. She’d told herself to put a stop to it right then and there. Only, what harm was there in indulging herself for once in her life, as she did by eating a chocolate bar now and then? Kyle T. Sherman would soon be on his way back to Ohio, and she’d never see him again. Never kiss him again.
Last night she’d instinctively looped her hands around Kyle’s neck, pulling him closer until their bodies came into contact. Electrified, she made no objection when he tangled his fingers in her hair, when he cupped her face, his big hands rough against her cheeks. She couldn’t remember ever kissing anyone with so much feeling and longing. Certainly it had never been that way with Milo or Sam or any of the others. She’d let them take the lead, but with Kyle, she’d be satisfied with nothing less than the whole sexual experience. Longed to lie naked with him in the shadows of the oaks near the edge of the lake. Anticipated guiding him into her and being possessed by him, his flesh hammering her into total surrender. It was bewildering to feel such a strong yearning, one that seemed likely to deprive her of all control.
So if they’d kept on kissing, where might it have ended? However, as things were heating up to the next level, they heard a raucous cry, then a large bird swept out of nowhere, its wings nearly brushing their cheeks as it passed. They sprang apart, both startled.
“I wasn’t expecting that,” Kyle said ruefully. His hand still rested on her shoulder, but the mood was broken and they had awkwardly moved apart.
Due to the untimely interruption, good sense returned, and she’d told Kyle that she’d better get a decent night’s sleep because she had clients to meet the next morning. When they reached the end of the dock, he shook her hand, which was really laughable considering their passionate kissing only a few moments past. He’d told her again how much he’d enjoyed spending the afternoon with her family. Then, her lips still tingling from his kisses, she’d fled into the house, where she leaned against the back door and fanned herself into a semblance of normality with a church program.
She hadn’t seen Kyle this morning when she’d headed to work. What he chose to do with his day was no business of hers. Except now that she’d developed a craving for his kisses and a hankering to learn not only how far she’d go but how far he would, she was determined that they’d both have a chance to find out.
While she was still lost in remembrance of last night, Dixie’s boss returned to the office and inquired how her two showings that morning had gone.
While she was filling him in, Mayzelle walked in with her poodle and started heating up a Lean Cuisine in the microwave in the break room. Two other agents arrived, excitedly discussing the current ad for the old textile mill in the Wall Street Journal, and Dixie fielded a call from a man who had discovered one of her listings on the Internet and asked if the house had a bonus room where he and his wife could raise Maine coon cats. Never a dull moment, Dixie told herself as she headed out to show one of the new houses up on the lake to the man with the cats.
Just the same she sure wished she knew what Kyle Sherman was up to.
AFTER HE CLEANED OUT the remaining three flower beds and fired up the Weedwacker to trim the overgrown grass at the edges of the driveway, Kyle treated himself to a long cool drink of water from the artesian well on Dixie’s property. The water bubbled up out of a pipe sunk into the earth and into a pool made by piling rocks in a circle. The water was clean and cold and pure, though some of the rocks had crumbled or were missing. They needed to be replaced and arranged in a downhill pattern so the pool could become a pretty little waterfall. He’d like to do that for Dixie if he stuck around long enough.
He tried to call his friend Elliott, with whom he’d tented at the reenactment. He wanted to let Elliott know that he was okay, but his cell phone was still not working. In the meantime, he noticed that the sky was a bright china blue with no clouds in sight. The lake crested in tiny waves driven by the warm breeze, and after cooling off, Kyle had an itch to get out and about, to explore this place where he had landed through no planning of his own.
He intended his driving tour to encompass downtown Yewville and leave it at that. Smitty’s Garage and Gas Station seemed to be doing a good business with cars lined up at the pumps. And at the town’s only traffic light, drivers saluted each other by raising a forefinger and nodding solemnly. The one depressing sight was the old Yewville Mill building, closed and shuttered. A For Sale sign hung on the chain-link fence that surrounded it and weeds grew up through cracks in the sidewalk. Someone had scrawled Moved To Mexico on the brick wall in front of the administration building.
His turn about Yewville took seven minutes total, beginning to end, after which he wasn’t of a mood to go back to his Hobbit cottage. Besides, he was hungry, so he stopped at the Eat Right Café.
It was a small storefront restaurant with red-and-white checked vinyl cloths tacked to the tables in the booths. The servers, all women, wore pink uniforms with bright handkerchiefs blossoming from their chest pockets, reminding Kyle of pictures he’d seen of 1940s diners. He sat down at the long black counter and checked out the menu stuck between the sugar shaker and napkin holder.
His waitress, who wore a name tag announcing herself as Kathy Lou, favored him with a great big smile as she came to take his order. “You must be the Yankee who’s staying in that old playhouse out there at Dixie Smith’s new place on the lake,” she said.
“How’d you know that?” he asked mildly, noting that chicken bog was today’s blue-plate special and wondering what in the world chicken bog could be.
“Word gets around.”
“Amazing. What’s chicken bog?”
“Local specialty,” Kathy Lou said. “Some people calls it chicken and rice, more soupy than the usual. I don’t recollect where the bog came from, ’less it’s because somebody was trying to impress people that we have a lot of swamp around here, though I’m not sure why anyone would want to do that, considering that all the swamp ever produced was Lizard Man, and it was a long time ago anybody saw him.”
“All right, I’ll order the chicken bog, only if you tell me about Lizard Man,” Kyle told her, and she laughed.
“Around here we figure the less said about it, the better,” she told him as she dished up a plate of chicken and rice. “It involved a teenager riding home through Scape Ore Swamp with a mess of fried chicken in a take-home bucket on the seat beside him. This thing rushed out of the swamp while the kid was changing a tire, and he said it looked like a cross between a lizard and a man. It tried to steal his chicken dinner. They never found the creature, if that’s what you’re wondering.” She started a fresh pot of coffee as the lunch crowd began to converge on the only eatery in town.
Kyle thanked Kathy Lou for the chicken bog recommendation and the Lizard Man story before leaving. As he walked out the door, several other servers clustered around Kathy Lou to “ooh” and “aah” over his magnanimous tip. He was secretly amused and made up his mind to leave an even larger one next time he stopped in.
He rode back down Palmetto Street, spotting Dixie framed in the big window strung across the front of the Yewville Real Estate Company office. She was talking on the phone in an animated fashion, and she was beautiful.
He wasn’t sure what to make of her. Usually he was a stickler for the accepted pacing of a relationship. In other words, first he’d call the woman in whom he’d developed an interest. Then he’d schmooze her, ask her out, and if his luck held, bed her by the third date. Yet with Dixie, he wanted to move faster than that. Dixie seemed to return his interest four times over, if he was any judge of women.
As he pondered this, he found himself on the highway driving toward the town of Camden. He smiled at Yewville’s famous peachoid water tower as he passed it his way out of town. Dolly’s, a truck stop out on the bypass, was doing a brisk business. A short distance down the road, a decrepit motel advertised ROOMS $6 AN HOUR WEEKLY $85 CLEAN SHEETS. After that, the countryside was mostly flat and canopied with trees rising lush and green on both sides of the narrow highway.
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