Ain't She Sweet? (44 page)

And I’d appreciate it if you’d show a little sensitivity to my feelings by not spending the rest of the night talking about things I wasn’t part of.”

An awkward silence fell over the group. Merylinn brushed a speck of lint from her slacks. Heidi twisted her wedding ring. Only Sugar Beth seemed comfortable with the situation, and her fine brows arched in phony surprise as she surveyed the others. “You mean you never initiated her?”

“We never thought of it,” Leeann said.

Merylinn tucked her legs under her. “You always took care of initiations.”

“That’s right, I did.” Sugar Beth turned her attention to Winnie, who wasn’t one bit comforted by the guile in those narrowed silver-blue eyes. “Winnie, leave the room while we vote.”

“Vote?”

Sugar Beth regarded her haughtily. “Do you want to be a Seawillow or not?”

Winnie haughtied her right back. “Don’t you think we’re a little old for this?”

No, they didn’t.

Winnie finally gave up arguing, partly because it wasn’t doing any good, and partly because Sugar Beth was finally showing some of her old spirit. Besides, Winnie really wanted to be a Seawillow.

They bundled her off to the living room. Where she waited.

And waited.

The minutes ticked by. Finally, she got fed up and stormed back to the sunroom. “Do you mind telling me what’s taking so darned long?”

Merylinn pointed toward Amy, who was sprawled on the floor. “Oh, we voted a long time ago, but Amy wanted to show us her new sit-ups, and we forgot to call you.”

That got Winnie upset all over again. “I won’t be forgotten, do y’all hear me? Just because Miss High and Mighty’s back in everybody’s good graces doesn’t mean I’m going to let any of you start walkin’ all over me.”

Sugar Beth sniffed. “Touchy.”

“Always was,” Merylinn agreed.

Leeann regarded Winnie smugly. “You’d better watch how you talk to us. You haven’t gone through the initiation ceremony yet, so we can withdraw your invitation any time we want.”

Winnie crossed her arms over her breasts and tapped her foot. “Initiation ceremony?”

That was all it took to set off a big debate, because nobody could remember exactly how the initiation ceremony went, except they all agreed on one thing. They needed a photograph of George Michael.

“For what?” Winnie asked with exaggerated patience.

Leeann tugged on her bra strap. “You have to swear to love him forever.”

“That is so not going to happen.”

“You have to,” Merylinn said. “It’s a Seawillow ritual.”

“Except we don’t have a photo,” Heidi pointed out.

Amy reached inside her purse and pulled out her Bible. “I’ve got an idea.”

“We are
not
using a picture of Jesus!” Merylinn exclaimed.

Amy looked disappointed but gracefully gave in to group pressure. The discussion continued, but went nowhere. Finally, Leeann took it upon herself to investigate Colin’s CD collection. “Look! Here’s the new U2 album. Winnie can swear allegiance to Bono instead.”

Heidi studied the album. “It just doesn’t seem the same.”

Sugar Beth passed the album over to Winnie with a grin that nearly made it to her eyes.

“Kiss Bono’s picture and swear to love him forever.”

Winnie regarded her loftily. “Only because of his dedication to good causes.”

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. Apparently they had a secret handshake, but nobody could remember what it was. They also used to sit in a circle and pass around some kind of necklace, but it had been lost years before.

“I remember one thing for sure,” Merylinn said. “You have to tell what boy you like.”

“Gosh, I’ll have to think about it,” Winnie said sarcastically.

“She’s not displaying proper Seawillow spirit,” Heidi pointed out.

“She also has to tell a sex secret,” Leeann said.

“Sex secret?” Winnie rolled her eyes. “You guys were eleven. How many sex secrets could you have had?”

“Quite a few. Merylinn found her mom’s copy of
Joy of Sex.
”

Winnie threw up her hands. “All right. A couple of nights ago I had an erotic dream about Edward Norton.”

“Like who hasn’t?” Heidi said, unimpressed. “We need a better secret than that.”

Winnie’s biggest sex secret—the lack of desire she’d once felt for her own husband—

was something she didn’t intend to share with anybody. She pretended to think it over.

“Okay, how about this? Merylinn, do you remember the time you kept Gigi so Ryan and I could go to that conference in Miami?”

“Uh-huh.”

“There wasn’t a conference in Miami. We took a hotel room in Memphis and spent the weekend playing sex slaves.”

It was a lie, but their reactions more than satisfied her.

“You slut!”

“Sex slaves?”

“Did you use handcuffs and everything?”

“Everything,”
Winnie said.

Sugar Beth wasn’t buying it, but she stayed loyal and kept her mouth shut, which made Winnie think about how nice it was to finally have a sister.

“She’s getting tears in her eyes,” Merylinn exclaimed. “That must have been one hell of a weekend.”

Winnie smiled at Sugar Beth. “Unforgettable.”

Sugar Beth returned the smile. “Even I can’t top an entire weekend playing sex slaves.”

Winnie shifted her position on the couch before another wave of sentiment caught up with her. “Isn’t it time to light the initiation candle?”

“Not quite.” Sugar Beth lifted an eyebrow in calculation. “There’s one more thing . . .”

Amy shot up from her chair. “No. We are
not
doing that.”

“We have to,” Sugar Beth said, “or Winnie’ll never be an official Seawillow.”

“Oh, God . . .” Merylinn threw her head back and started to laugh.

Leeann groaned. “I shouldn’t have eaten so much.”

“If we do, we can’t tell anybody,” Heidi said. “You know how my mother-in-law hates me. If she finds out, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Do what?” Winnie asked, not entirely sure she wanted to know.

A few moments of silence fell over the group. They looked at one another. Finally, Amy spoke in a hushed voice. “We have to strip down naked and run around Frenchman’s Bride three times.”

Winnie regarded them incredulously. “You’re making this up.”

Leeann snorted. “I wish.”

Amy shook her head. “It’s true. Whenever anybody new came into the Seawillows—”

“Which thankfully wasn’t too often,” Merylinn interjected.

“—we’d wait for a night when Sugar Beth could talk Diddie into letting us have a sleepover.”

“Preferably during the summer so we could sleep outside on the veranda,” Heidi added.

“Once Diddie and Griffin fell asleep,” Amy went on, “we’d strip down, and all of us would run naked around the house.”

“I never heard a word about this,” Winnie said.

“It was our best secret.”

“Our only secret,” Leeann said dryly.

“Even the guys don’t know.”

“It’s barely dark,” Winnie said. “And it’s not even sixty degrees outside.”

Sugar Beth grinned at her. “Then we’d better run fast.”

A debate over terms and conditions followed, but in the end, they only made one concession to maturity. They agreed they could keep their shoes on.

“I knew I should have thrown out these ratty panties,” Leeann said a few minutes later as they stood in the sunroom peeling off their clothes.

“Somebody make sure
all
the lights are off.”

“I’m savin’ up for liposuction. I really am.”

“I liked it better when we hated Sugar Beth. Look at her legs.”

“Ohmygod, Winnie has a
humongous
hickey!”

Naked and giggling, they clustered at the back door. “Y’all ready?” Merylinn asked.

“Ready!” they declared.

Sugar Beth grabbed the knob and threw it open. “Seawillows forever!” she cried.

And then they flew.

Ryan and Gigi’s impulsive late-night walk took them to the end of Mockingbird Lane. As they reached the drive that led to Frenchman’s Bride, they came to a dead stop at the exact same moment.

Gigi found her voice first. “Do you think they went crazy or something?”

“Sure does look like it.”

They didn’t say anything for a few moments, but Gigi finally grew so horrified she couldn’t stay quiet. “You shouldn’t watch.”

“Honey, I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

High-pitched giggles drifted toward them, a curse, a shush. The women disappeared around the side of the house.

Gigi scowled. “If the kids at school find out about this, I’m not going back. I mean it.”

“We’ll leave town together.”

“Nothing like this ever happened before Sugar Beth came back.”

“If she stays, it’ll only get worse.”

“Still, I don’t want her to leave.”

He squeezed her shoulder. “Neither do I.”

Gigi sucked in her breath as the women reappeared from the other side of the house, this time with her own mother in the lead. “This is
so
embarrassing.”

“The sad thing is, I doubt they’ve had a drop of liquor.”

“I used to think Mom was perfect.”

“She can’t help it, honey. Southern women are born with the insanity gene.”

“Not me.”

He sighed. “Sooner or later, you’ll go the way of the rest.”

With a hissing noise, the automatic lawn sprinklers came on, and all of them began to shriek.

“I can’t look anymore.”

Ryan buried his daughter’s face in his chest and smiled. “In the morning, we’ll pretend it was all a bad dream.”

Sugar Beth shut off her alarm. It was Tuesday, the day she’d planned to leave Parrish.

She turned her head into Colin’s pillow, and as she drew in his familiar scent, she prayed he’d come home before she had to change the sheets. Misery washed over her. She fought it off by remembering last night and the Seawillows. She smiled. Winnie had given her a priceless gift.

She managed to pull herself out of bed—not an easy task these days—and get dressed before she headed for the bookstore.

“I thought you’d be packing now,” Jewel said as Sugar Beth handed over the blueberry danish she’d intended to eat but couldn’t quite stomach.

“A temporary change of plans. I’m hanging around a little longer.”

Jewel’s tiny face brightened. “For real?”

She nodded and filled her in on what had happened with Colin.

“He left? Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Sugar Beth replied, warmed by Jewel’s expression of outrage.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Keep trying to get hold of him.”

Jewel regarded her sympathetically. “From what you’ve said, that could take a while. He doesn’t seem to want to be found.”

“I’m calling his editor. Somebody has to know where he is.”

“You’d better come up with a more believable story than that Oprah thing you told me about.”

“I will.”

Colin’s editor answered on the second ring. “Neil Kirkpatrick.”

“Lady Francis Posh-Wicket here calling from London.”

“Who?”

“I’m the director of Her Majesty’s Royal Office of the Garter. Her Majesty has some rather exciting news for one of your authors. Sir Colin Byrne. Ah, but what a stupid cow I am. He’s not Sir Colin yet. Which is why I need to ring him up. But he doesn’t seem to be answering his bloody phone.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know where he is.”

“Bollocks, sir. Am I to believe you’ve lost one of your most important authors?”

“Excuse me?”

“Perhaps
you
would like to be the one to tell Her Majesty that Sir Colin has disappeared because I’m sure I don’t want to.”

“Who is this?”

“I must insist you locate Sir Colin im-
me
-jetly.”

“I don’t know who you are, but I have work to do here.”

“Not until you tell me where the hell he is, you
wanker
!”

There was a long pause. “Sugar Beth, is that you?”

This time she was the one who hung up.

“They’re all mad, every one of ’em,” said Rupert with conviction.

GEORGETTE HEYER,
Devil’s Cub

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Blazes of azalea and dogwood announced the arrival of April. Northern Mississippi had never been more beautiful, but Sugar Beth was miserable. She lived her days in limbo, taking comfort only in the fact that no moving company had appeared to pack up Colin’s things. Sometimes she managed to convince herself that Colin was simply trying to manipulate her and that he’d be back soon. But as one week gave way to another, she began to believe he’d meant exactly what he’d said.

Two weeks after Colin had driven away, Ryan appeared at her door with the news that he’d finally called. “He’s rented a house—he didn’t mention where. He says he’s working round-the-clock to finish his book.”

“What about me? What did he say about me?”

Ryan made a business of examining his car keys. “I’m sorry, Sugar Beth. He said he didn’t want to talk to you yet—maybe when his book is done. And he said to stop harassing his publisher. Oh . . . he asked about Gordon.”

Bloody wanker.

He
was
manipulating her! A flood of righteous indignation drove away the tears that were so close to the surface these days. She pushed past Ryan, headed for the Lakehouse, and spent the evening dancing with Cubby Bowmar.

Her anger carried her through the next two weeks. And then
Reflections
hit the stores . . .

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Jewel crowed. “The book hasn’t been out a full week, and I’ve already sold three hundred copies.”

“
Hoo
-ray,” Sugar Beth said glumly.

Sue Covner regarded Sugar Beth smugly from behind Jewel’s shoulder. “Look on the bright side, Valentine, honey. Not everybody gets to be immortalized in great literature.”

Marge Dailey poked her head out from the inspirationals. “I think you’re holdin’ up pretty well. If it was me, I swear I’d move to Mexico. Although I suppose that’s not really far enough away, still bein’ in North America and all.”