Ain't She Sweet? Part 36

Colin was thirty miles outside Oxford when he heard the siren. He glanced at his speedometer and saw he was going eighty. Brilliant. He backed off and pulled over. Gordon sat up on the seat. The perfect ending to a miserable day.

A stalker. Was that how she saw him?

As he handed over his license, he thought about how much differently the evening had unfolded than what he'd planned. Getting Sugar Beth out of Parrish had seemed like a good idea, and Rowan Oak a convenient choice. He'd tried to impress her with a private tour, and he'd imagined the combination of a romantic setting and his personal charm would lull her enough so he could talk to her about Reflections, so he could explain. But he'd forgotten personal charm wasn't his long suit, and she'd undoubtedly grown immune to contrived romantic settings before her twenty-first birthday. He hadn't planned on throwing the book at her, that was for certain. He'd intended to lead up to it gradually, to explain how he'd felt when he'd been working on it and point out that he'd finished writing it months before she'd come back. Most of all, he'd planned to warn her. And then he was going to tell her about the painting.

"You're the author," the trooper said, gazing at Colin's license. "The one who wrote that book about Parrish."

Colin nodded but didn't try to strike up a conversation. He saw no honor in attempting to talk himself out of a ticket he deserved. But the trooper had a book-loving wife and a ba.s.set hound, and he sent him on with only a warning.

Colin reached the edge of town, but instead of heading directly for Frenchman's Bride, he drove aimlessly through the quiet streets. There'd been a fierceness about her tonight that scared him. She wasn't playing games. She'd meant every word she'd said. And he'd fallen in love with her.

The knowledge felt old and familiar, as though it had been part of him for a very long time. With his lifelong appreciation of the ironic, he should be amused, but he couldn't find a laugh anywhere. He'd misjudged, misplayed, and misbehaved. In the process, he'd lost something unbearably precious.

Sugar Beth wanted to be alone when she read Reflections, so she declined Winnie's invitation to join her for church on Sunday morning. As soon as her car pulled away, she threw on a pair of jeans, grabbed an old blanket, and set off for the lake. She'd have liked to bring Gordon with her, but he hadn't come back. It was beginning to look as though he never would.

She laid out the blanket in a sunny spot not far from the deserted boat launch and gazed down at the cover of the book. It was marked "Uncorrected Proof Not for Sale," which meant he'd given her one of the editions printed up for reviewers and booksellers before the real book came out in another month. She ran her hand over the cover and braced herself for what she was fairly certain he'd written about her mother. Diddie might have been high-handed, but she'd also been a force for progress, and if Colin hadn't acknowledged that, she'd never forgive him.

A church bell tolled in the distance, and she began to read: I came to Parrish twice, the first time to write a great novel, and more than a decade later, because I needed to make my way back home.

He'd put himself in the book. She was startled. He hadn't done that in Last Whistle-stop. She rushed through the opening chapter, which told of his first days in Parrish. In the second chapter he used an encounter with Tallulah-Your hair is far too long, young man, even for a foreigner-to take the story back to the late 1960s, when the town's economy had begun to fall apart. His account of the near bankruptcy of the window factory read like a thriller, the tension heightened by funny, hometown tales such as the Great Potato Salad rivalry at Christ the Redeemer Church. As he moved into the 1970s, he personalized the human cost of the town's racial politics through Aaron Leary's family. And, as she'd suspected he would, he wrote of Diddie and Griffin. She didn't care so much about the portrait he'd painted of her father, but her cheeks burned with anger as he showed her beautiful, high-handed mother marching through town trailing cigarette ash and condescension. Although he didn't neglect her accomplishments, it was still a devastating portrayal.

With nearly a hundred pages left, she closed the book and wandered down to the water. She'd a.s.sumed he'd end the story in 1982 when the new factory had opened, but there were three chapters still to go, and apprehension had begun to form a knot in her stomach. Maybe Diddie wasn't the only person she should have worried about.

She returned to the blanket, picked up the book again, and began the next chapter.

In 1986, I was twenty-two years old and Parrish was my nirvana. The townspeople accepted my oddness, my staggering shortcomings in the cla.s.sroom, my strange accent and haughty pretensions. I was writing a novel, and Mississippi loves a writer more than anyone else. I felt accepted for the first time in my life. I was completely, blissfully happy...until my Southern Eden was destroyed by a girl named Valentine.

At eighteen, she was the most beautiful creature anyone had ever seen. Watching her saunter up the sidewalk to the front doors of Parrish High was watching s.e.xual artistry in motion...

Sugar Beth finished the page, read the next, kept reading as her breathing grew shallow and her skin hot with rage. She was Valentine. He'd changed her name, changed the names of all of them who'd been teenagers at the time, but no one would be fooled for a moment.

Valentine was a teenage vampire, sipping the blood of her hapless victims along with her Chicken McNuggets after school. She didn't turn truly dangerous, however, until she decided not to limit herself to the plasma of teenage boys and began looking for older prey.

Me.

The sun dipped low over the lake, and the air grew cool. By the time she reached the end, she was shivering. She set the book aside and curled into herself. Her story took up less than a chapter, but she felt as if every word had been written into her skin, like the ink tattoos the boys punched in their wrists with ballpoint pens when they got bored in cla.s.s. Everything was there-her selfishness, her manipulations, her lie-all of it exposed for the world to see and judge. Shame burned inside her. Anger. He'd known from the beginning. While they were laughing, kissing, making love, he'd known what he'd written about her, what she would someday read, yet he hadn't warned her.

She stayed at the lake until it grew dark, with the blanket pulled around her shoulders and knees drawn to her chest. When she returned, the carriage house felt empty and oppressive. Winnie had left a note on the table, but Sugar Beth walked past it. She hadn't eaten all day, and now the thought of food nauseated her. She went upstairs and washed her face, lay down on the bed, but the ceiling Tallulah had gazed at for forty decades felt like a coffin lid. Her aunt's life had been a dirge of regret and misery lived out in the name of love.

Sugar Beth couldn't breathe. She rose and headed downstairs, but even here, Tallulah's bitterness permeated everything. The shabby furniture, the faded wallpaper, the yellowed curtains-all of it stained with the anger of a woman who'd made lost love her life's obsession. Her head began to pound. This wasn't a home, it was a mausoleum, and the studio was its heart. She grabbed the key and made her way out into the night. She fumbled with the lock in the dark. When it gave, she pulled open the doors and flicked the switch on the bare, overhead lightbulb. As she gazed around at her aunt's pathetic memorial to lost love, she imagined Colin's explanations, his justifications. The book was written long before you came back. What good would it have served if I'd told you earlier?

What good, indeed?

She stepped into the chaotic heart of her aunt's dark spirit and began ripping away the dirty plastic. She would not live her life like this. Never again. She wouldn't be a prisoner to her own neediness. She'd strike a match to all of it, send this mad energy of paint and loss up in flames.

The colors swirled. Her heart raced. The frenetic dabs and splatters spun around her. And then she saw it.

The painting Lincoln Ash had left behind.

Miss Creed, going dejectedly up to bed, sat for a long time at the open window of her room, and gazed blindly out upon the moonlit scene. She had spent, she decided, quite the most miserable day of her life.

GEORGETTE HEYER, The Corinthian.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

The painting had been here all along, a ferocious web of crimson and black, cobalt and ocher, with angry trails of yellow and explosions of green. Not a drop cloth at all. It had never been a drop cloth. She gave a choked sob and went down on her knees next to the enormous canvas spread across the concrete floor, ran her hands over an encapsulated paint lid, a fossilized cigarette b.u.t.t. These weren't objects dropped by accident, but relics deliberately left in place to mark the moment of creation. A strangled hiccup caught in her throat. There was nothing random about these dribbles and splatters. This was an organized composition, an eruption of form, color, and emotion. Now that she saw it for what it was, she couldn't believe she'd ever mistaken it for a drop cloth. She crawled around the perimeter, found the signature in the far corner, ran her fingers over the single word ASH.

She fell back on her heels. Even in the garish light of the single bulb dangling from the rafters, the painting's tumult spoke to the chaos in her own heart. She swayed. Let its angry rhythm claim her. Moved her body. Gave herself up to misery. Gazed into the painting's soul.

"Sugar...Sugar...Sugar Pie..."

A hoot. A whistle.

"Sugar...Sugar...Sugar Pie..."

Her head snapped up.

"Sugar...Sugar...Come out and play..."

She shot to her feet. Cubby Bowmar and his boys were back.

They stood on the small crescent of lawn in front of the carriage house-six of them-beer cans in hand, faces turned to the moon, baying for her. "Come on, Sugar Beth...Come on, baby..."

Hoots and howls.

"Sugar...Sugar...Sugar..."

They chanted and chugged.

"Sugar...Sugar...Sugar..."

Wolf whistles, yowls, drunken, piggish snorts.

She stormed toward them. "Cubby Bowmar, I'm sick of this. You stop it right now!"

Cubby threw out his arms and fell into Tommy Lilburn. "Aw, Sugar Beth, all we want is some love."

"All you're gonna get is a big fat piece of my mind if you and your sorry-a.s.s friends don't haul yourselves off my property."

Junior Battles lurched forward. "You don't mean that, Sugar Beth. Com' on. Have a beer with us."

"Does your wife know you're here?"

"Don't be like that now. We're just havin' us a boys' night out."

"A morons' night out is more like it."

"You're the mos' beautiful woman in the world." Cubby tucked his free hand under his armpit and flapped it like a one-winged rooster as he began the chant again. "Sugar...Sugar...Sugar..."

Junior took it up. "Sugar...Sugar...Sugar..."

Tommy threw back his head, spewing beer and woofing.

"Oh, for Lord's sake be quiet." She spun on Cubby, ready to light into him, when, out of nowhere, Colin appeared like a dark avenger and launched himself at them.

Cubby let out a grunt of pain as Colin's shoulder caught him in the chest and brought him down. Colin went after Junior next, a sharp jab to the jaw that made Junior howl as he slammed into a tree. Carl Ray Norris tried to run away, but Colin threw himself at his back and brought him down, taking Jack McCall along for the ride. Eight feet away, Tommy dropped to the ground before Colin could touch him.

Gradually, Colin realized that n.o.body was fighting back. He cursed and rose to his feet. He stood with his fists on his hips, legs braced, waiting for Cubby or Junior, for Jack or Carl Ray. Moonlight glinted off his dark hair and gleaming white shirt. He looked like a pirate, the black sheep son of a n.o.ble family forced to earn his fortune plundering Spanish galleons and beating up rednecks.

He opened his palms, taunted them in a low, harsh voice. "Come on, boys. You want to play. You play with me."

Sugar Beth's eyes shot from Colin, to the men on the ground, to Tommy crawling on all fours trying to find his beer. The blood roared in her ears. "Isn't one of you going to fight him?"

Cubby rubbed his knee. "Dang, Sugar Beth, we're too drunk."

"There are six of you!" she shouted.

"We might hurt him."

"That's the idea, you fool!"

Junior rubbed his jaw. "It's Colin, Sugar Beth. He's a writer. Everybody'd get p.i.s.sed off if we fought him."

"I'll do it, then, you worthless sons of b.i.t.c.hes." And she hurled herself at him.

Colin staggered backward, taken by surprise. She swung at him, and he grunted as her fist caught the side of his head. She gave a hiss of pain-his head was harder than her hand-but didn't let that stop her. Instead, she shot out her leg and caught him behind the knee.

They went down together.

He gave an oof as her elbow sank into his midsection, then sucked in his breath. "What are you doing?"

"Kickin' your a.s.s, you sneaky, rat b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" She tried to rise to her knees so she could swing again, but she slipped in the damp gra.s.s and came down hard across him, so she attacked his chest instead.

"You're going to hurt yourself!" He caught the waistband of her jeans and yanked on them, rolling her to the side, going with her, pinning her.

She gazed up at him.

His teeth glittered, and his eyes narrowed into slits. "Are you ready to settle down yet?"

She hit him as hard as she could.

He winced, grabbed her upper arms, and pinioned them. As she tried to free her knee, he antic.i.p.ated the movement and trapped her under his thigh. She kicked out with the other leg and caught him in the calf. They rolled. Now she was on top. Instead of retaliating, he tried to contain her, which made her furious. "Fight back, you lying limey sissy!"

"Stop it!" He tried to snare her other leg. At the same time, he growled at the men, "Get her off me before she breaks something."

"She's doin' okay," Junior said.

"Watch 'at other knee," Carl Ray called out.

He was a few seconds too late, and Colin let out a bellow. She'd missed the bull's-eye, but she'd caught him high enough on the thigh to hurt. He uttered a low, particularly vile curse and rolled her beneath him again.

You're going to be a woman for the ages, Sugar Beth.

The echo of her mother's words sent shame spiraling through her, and the adrenaline that had fueled her ran out. Another man. Another brawl. She felt sick.

Gradually, Colin realized she'd stopped fighting. The pressure on her chest began to ease. He rolled off.

She heard the pop of a beer can followed by Cubby's voice. "Looks like the fun's over, folks. Guess we better be on our way."

Feet began to move. "'Night, Sugar Beth."

Somebody's keys jangled. "'Night, Colin."

A belch. "Y'all take care now."

Moments later, she heard the sound of truck engines.

Colin stood, the sound of his breathing harsh in the night air, his chest heaving. He gazed down at her, then extended his hand to help her up.

She ignored him and made it to her knees by herself. Her elbow burned from a sc.r.a.pe, and she'd ripped her slacks. She felt something hot on her face, but it took her a moment to realize she'd started to cry.

Colin's heart wrenched as he gazed down at her and saw tears glistening on those beautiful cheekbones. He'd finally done it. He'd finally brought Sugar Beth Carey to her knees.

With a strangled exclamation, he sank down next to her and drew her close. She didn't fight him. He began kissing her eyelids, her cheeks, sipping up the moisture. His own eyes burned, and he blinked against the sting. He ran his hand down the fragile b.u.mps of her spine. Kissed her temples. He was a man of words, but he couldn't think of anything to say except the ridiculous, which came out as a rusty whisper. "You've read my book, I see."

She nodded against him.

He pressed his forehead to hers. Breathed in as she exhaled. Tried to think of some way to make it all disappear, but he couldn't come up with a thing.

"I feel like I was raped," she whispered.

He winced.

Her breath fell soft on his face. "I know all of it was written long before I came back. And everything you wrote was true. I know that. I was fair game. More than fair game. And you could have written worse about me than you did. I even understand why you didn't tell me right away. What good would it have done, right? And now, at least I'll be prepared."

"Don't, my love," he whispered. "Don't try to justify something that hurts you so much." He cradled her face, kissed the damp trail on her cheek. "If I could do it again, I'd write it differently."

"Facts don't change."