Scrimmage Gone South (Crimson Romance) (3 page)

Real classy, Coach.

It had been a shock to return to his hometown and find Harris Bragg and Townshend practicing law on Main Street. Though they had not been close, Harris had been his teammate at the University of Alabama and Nathan was glad to reconnect with him.

Townshend was a different matter. If he’d known she was here, he’d have stayed at West Texas High School, where he was offensive co-coordinator, and waited for the head coach to retire. He probably should have anyway. It was a big school with a long winning tradition and he’d been all but promised the big office. They’d won seven state championships in the nine years he was there, due in no small part to his coaching ability — an ability he didn’t even know he had when he took the job that had been offered to him on the strength of his name. He’d been content there, and never thought about Townshend anymore.

But when the call came from the mayor of Merritt, he’d felt compelled to return to his alma mater. He’d even likened himself to the legendary Bear Bryant who left a winning team at Texas A&M to return to a disastrous program in Tuscaloosa, Alabama where he’d played his own college ball. When asked why, the Bear had only replied, “Mama called.”

For Nathan, too, “Mama” had called. The people of Merritt recognized a winner when they saw one. “Watch that Scott kid. He’s got what it takes.” People had said that from the time he played peewee ball all the way through his high school years. The day he had turned down five other major offers to sign his full ride scholarship with the University of Alabama, there had been a celebration on the town square.

During his college years, he achieved celebrity status and as it became more and more clear that he was going to the NFL, they became more and more proud. He had often come back to town, not only to see his father, but to speak at sports banquets, sign autographs at charity events, and ride on floats in Christmas and Homecoming parades.

But then, two games away from the end of his college career, six months away from NFL draft day, he’d let himself go on the field distracted — by Townshend. He zigged when he should have zagged and five hundred pounds of Mississippi State Bulldog took him down from two different directions.

He’d never known that kind of pain. As he was taken off the field on the stretcher, if he’d been able to think of anything other than his knee and his heart, he might have imagined the stunned sick disappointed silence in the streets of Merritt.

He owed them. In a way, he had cost them twice, though it wasn’t precisely his fault that his father had celebrated with the wrong girl after winning the state championship his senior year of high school and the end result had been Nathan. The town had expected Richard Scott to accept one of the many full ride football scholarships he’d been offered and go on to do great things. No doubt, though he never said a word about it to Nathan, Richard had expected that too. Instead, he’d gotten married and gone to work for the utility company, only to find himself abandoned with a five-month-old baby at the age of nineteen.

His father was dead now, had died from falling off a ladder while clearing he gutters in the spring of Nathan’s junior year at Alabama. It was up to Nathan to atone for the both of them.

Scott men weren’t the best at succeeding, but if he could turn the Merritt Bobcats into winners again, the town might see him as a success, even if he never saw himself that way. But he could not do it if he didn’t stay focused.

He would never again allow Townshend Lee to distract him. She wasn’t worth it.

• • •

“I cannot in good conscience draw up another divorce agreement for you, Mary Nell,” Tolly said to the woman sitting across from her desk. Mary Nell had been waiting for her when she got back from the showdown with Nathan. Tolly was in no mood for this.

“I don’t know why not.” Mary Nell examined her impossibly long nails. They were French manicured; they would be. She patted her platinum hair.

“You’ve had papers served on Frank twice in the last eighteen months — papers that I drew up. You have no intention of divorcing him. This is a tactic to keep him in line.”

“What if it is?” Mary Nell crossed her legs and her short skirt crept to mid-thigh. “Frank shapes up; you get paid. Everybody’s happy.”

“See a marriage counselor and leave me out of it.”

“You can’t refuse to represent me.” Mary Nell’s cotton candy pink lipsticked mouth landed in a pout. “It’s in the Constitution. I am entitled to counsel.”

“All that is so untrue that I am not even going to dignify it with an answer.”

“Come on, Tolly. Just spit one of those other sets of papers out of your computer and send it over. Charge me like you started from scratch. Frank deserves to have to pay for it. It’ll be like free money for you.”

“No.”

“Why?” Mary Nell’s voice had the whine of a child who had accepted the inevitable but didn’t want to admit it.

“Because it’s one step on the wrong side of ambulance chasing.”

Mary Nell uncrossed her legs and her pout deflated. “Maybe I ought to really divorce him. Maybe I ought to take out after Nathan Scott now that he’s back. We dated some in high school, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that.” Tolly felt a pang of jealously, an emotion that was as inappropriate as it was irrational.

“We didn’t go out many times. Nathan liked cheerleaders and I was a majorette.” Would this woman never leave? “I’ll bet you were a cheerleader.”

“No,” Tolly said. “I went to Mason-Harper Academy. We didn’t have cheerleaders.”

“Where’s that? I’ve never heard of it. What kind of school doesn’t have cheerleaders?”

“It’s a girls’ boarding school in Montgomery.”

“I wouldn’t have liked that. Boys were the whole point of high school.”

And that has changed how, for you?
“Well, as your attorney,” Tolly said crisply, “I counsel you to do the divorcing first and the ‘taking out after’ second.”

“I can’t do it anyway, yummy as Nathan is. A coach’s salary wouldn’t keep me in manicures. Plus there’s Frank, Jr.’s music lessons and Tiffany’s dancing. Now, if Nathan had gone on to play pro ball like he was supposed to — ”

That, always that.

“He likely wouldn’t be here coaching at Merritt High,” Tolly pointed out.

“Do you know they said he would probably get a fifty million dollar contract?”

“Well,
they
can certainly be depended on for accuracy.” But it was true. She’d read every word written about Nathan from the time she met him until months after his injury when the news finally dwindled away. And she hadn’t forgotten one word of it.

“If only he hadn’t gotten hurt.”

If only.

“To this day, nobody understands why it happened. Nathan just didn’t make mistakes like that that.”

Tolly stood up. “Mary Nell, I hate to end this delightful speculation, but I’ve got a client coming in five minutes.”

“I’m a client. I’m supposed to have a whole hour.”

“You were supposed to have a whole hour tomorrow. I canceled because I’m going to Eula Lawson’s funeral.”

Mary Nell stood up. “That is really too bad about Miss Eula.”

“Yes, it is.” Maybe Mary Nell wasn’t so bad. There was true regret on her face.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do about a cake for Tiffany’s birthday next week.”

With their thick corn silk white blond hair and blue gray eyes, Tolly Lee and Harris Bragg looked more like siblings than cousins and for good reason. Their mothers were identical twins. Whether it was the shared DNA or because they grew up in houses separated only by their grandparents’ 1854 plantation house, Tolly and Harris were also remarkably alike in their mannerisms and expressions.

So when, after sitting down in the chair across from Tolly’s desk, Harris closed his eyes and shook his head, Tolly knew exactly what it meant. He was beyond frustrated — and she was probably about to be.

“Tell me,” she said.

“You aren’t going to like it.” He tossed a legal document in her direction.

“I got that.” She picked up the file. “What is this?”

“Eula Lawson’s last will and testament.” Harris laced his hands together behind his head and looked at the ceiling.

“I know she didn’t have a lot, but please tell me she provided for Kirby.” Tolly flipped though the document. It had been written on a typewriter. Never good. “You could not have written this.”

“No. I was probably writing book reports and algebra problems about the time Coleman Gilliam wrote that will. Eula had it drawn up when Kirby was two, right after his parents were killed. It came with the practice.”

Tolly laid the document aside. “Bottom line?”

“She owned her house, there was a modest life insurance policy and some savings bonds. And she left it all to her daughter.”

“Fabulous.” Kirby’s aunt had put on a show at the funeral yesterday that did nothing to improve Tolly’s first impression of her or endear her to Harris. Harris Bragg could appreciate a good case of hysterics, but only if it wasn’t contrived. “What about Kirby? Didn’t Eula mention him at all?”

“Oh, she did. She left a handwritten letter to her daughter admonishing her to ‘do right’ by Kirby.”

“Anything legally binding?”

“You know the answer to that as well as I do.”

Tolly leafed through the file. “Guardian?”

“Again, the aunt.”

“I’m sure it will be fine.” But there was nothing they could do about it either way.

Harris scowled. “They’re coming in to the office Saturday morning for the reading. Can you come in? And read over that?”

Harris must be really torn up about this to agree to a Saturday meeting. He liked to play golf and watch college football too well to do that very often.

“Sure, but I can’t do anything.”

“Maybe we can intimidate them.”

“Harris, don’t borrow trouble. Kirby’s her nephew. Of course, she’ll want what’s best for him.”

“Dream on, Tolly girl. Dream on. You are expecting what would have happened to us if something like this had happened in our family.”

• • •

When Tolly and Harris entered the conference room, Janice Lawson Johnson and her husband, Carl, were seated on one side of the long mahogany table and Kirby on the other. After shaking hands all around, Harris sat at the head of the table like he always did, and Tolly sat to his left beside Kirby.

Harris passed out copies of the will, which Kirby did not touch but Janice and Carl fell on like vultures, though there wasn’t much to pick over. Tolly had gone over the document with a fine-toothed comb and it was straightforward and airtight. No surprise there. Coleman Gilliam had been a good attorney, or Harris wouldn’t have gone to work for him in the first place, or bought the practice after Coleman was elected to the bench.

Tolly smiled at Kirby, who tried to smile back but ended up crossing his arms over his chest and looking at the table. Harris took charge, like he always did.

“You’ll want to read that, of course. Maybe have your attorney look over it, but it’s not complicated.”

“We don’t have an attorney and we can’t make heads or tails of this,” Janice said. “Can’t you just tell us?”

“Yes,” Harris said. “That’s why we’re here. Mrs. Lawson had this drawn up shortly after being appointed Kirby’s legal guardian. That guardianship now passes on to you.”

“Until when?” Carl spoke for the first time.

“Depends on the state. Here, when he’s nineteen. In Ohio, until Kirby is eighteen in January.”

Kirby let out a long sigh and it was not one of relief.

“What about the house and her bank account?” Janice asked impatiently.

“All of Mrs. Lawson’s assets will come to you, Mrs. Johnson.”

“All? The house and insurance?”

“And there are some savings bonds.”

Janice and Carl looked at each other and nodded with satisfaction.

“There’s the letter that your mother left you,” Harris continued. “You have the original.”

Janice flipped through the pages of pink floral stationery. “It says here I am supposed to take care of Kirby. What does that mean?”

Harris cleared his throat and looked at the table. Then he gave her a dazzling smile — probably the same one that had made Missy fall at his feet over a decade ago. “Well, Janice, you certainly knew your mother better than I did, probably better than anyone on the face of this earth.”

Kirby snorted and, almost involuntary, Tolly lightly smacked his leg under the table.

“But even I knew Miss Eula well enough to know what a wonderful, loving mother and grandmother she was. I am sure she wanted Kirby taken care of as I want my children taken care of. I have a three-year-old and my wife and I are expecting a little girl next month. Do you have children?”

Carl said, “Our boy is Kirby’s age and our girl is fifteen.”

“Then you know!” Harris laughed with delight as if everyone in the room shared the same opinion. Tolly had seen this act before. Sometimes it worked out and sometimes it went badly. “Of course, beyond the essentials, we want them to be happy, secure, and have good educations. Miss Eula told me she wanted that for Kirby.” Harris might be lying about that, but then again, maybe not. He was known for talking to everyone he ran into about everything.

“But what is it exactly that we
have
to do? What does he get?” Janice asked.

So it had come to this. Tolly wanted nothing as much as she wanted to fly across the table and choke Janice Lawson Johnson. But she would never do that. She was nothing if not cool. She was known in the legal community for her icy pragmatism.

“He gets what you give him,” Harris said flatly, “but I’m sure you will want to do the right thing.”

Janice nodded and for the first time she looked at Kirby. “I can take another week of bereavement leave. I’ll pack what I want out of the house, have a yard sale, and put the house up for sale. You need to get in school and Carl has to go back to work, so pack up and be ready to leave Sunday morning.”

“What!” Kirby came out of his chair. “That’s tomorrow. I have a game next Friday night. I am not going to Ohio!”