Southern Comfort (18 page)

“For taking care of me last night. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I feel a little responsible for you if you want to know the truth.”

The last thing he wanted her to feel for him was responsibility. That lumped him with everyone else in her life and as ridiculous as it seemed, he wanted to stand out from the others. He wanted to be someone special to her. More than a responsibility, more than another thing to check off on her to-do list.

He’d have to examine that when his head wasn’t splitting in two.

“I wish you’d felt more of a responsibility for me last night when I walked into that bar.”

She shook her head. “That was all up to you.”

She let herself out of the room, and Newland fell back on the bed, wincing as his head was jarred again. He’d have to find something to cure this hangover. The moonshine went down smooth, but the next day it came knocking again.

• • •

The knowing smirk on Aubie’s face was almost more than Natalie could take. Still, she managed to sit across from him and keep her own expression as neutral as Switzerland. Even more so. That was the only way she could gain back control. And that was the one thing she badly needed. Control of her life, control of her emotions, and definitely control of her hormones whenever Newland was within fifteen feet of her.

She took up the bowl of scrambled eggs and scooped some onto her plate, just as he stumbled into the dining room.

Speak of the devil …

He walked slowly, as if he moved too fast he would puke. She supposed drinking contraband moonshine would do that to a man.

He eased forward, dark sunglasses hiding his exotic eyes from view. Other than that, he was the same old Newland. Concert t-shirt blue jeans and Converse. Today’s offering was Green Day American Idiot. A prophecy if she had ever seen one.

“Oh, Newland,” Aunt Bitty said, as he took his seat at the foot of the table. “Are you okay?”

He cleared his throat and gave a small nod. “I see you found Natalie.” It was a poor attempt at changing the subject if she had ever heard one.

“Oh, yes,” Aunt Bitty said, taking up the butter knife and slathering her biscuit. “I guess I just missed her. It seems she had been upstairs the whole time.”

The flush of heat that rose into her cheeks was hot enough to fry eggs. But as long as she didn’t think about where she had been and what she’d been doing …
almost
doing when Aunt Bitty had come knocking on Newland’s door, then surely it would fade in an hour or two.

“So did you have a good time last night, sis?”

Natalie switched her attention back to her brother. “A great time, yes. How about you?”

Aubie smirked. “Do anything special? Something maybe you haven’t done in a long time?”

She kicked him under the table, and though she knew she hit her mark, his grin grew wider. Brothers were nothing but trouble.

“Nothing special,” she said.

Newland ahem-ed from his end of the table.

“What about you?” Aubie turned his snarky gaze to Newland.

Unlike her, the reporter didn’t flush red or kick Aubie. He just gave a one-armed shrug and took a sip of his coffee. “Everything I do in this town is new.”

Natalie didn’t know what to make of that. Was he talking about going to the Last Call Saloon or their wild encounter on her couch?

“Newland, dear, why don’t you have a biscuit? Or some sausage?” Aunt Bitty lifted the plate covered with the fried meats.

Newland looked at them, his expression pained and queasy. “No, thank you. I’m not much of a breakfast eater.”

“You ate four biscuits yesterday,” Aubie said.

Natalie had been thinking the same thing, but she wasn’t about to call Newland out on his lie.

“I’m not much for breakfast today,” Newland qualified.

“It seems Mr. Tran has had a run in with our local hooch.”

Aunt Bitty immediately perked up. “Did you go down to the cellar and find the moonshine?”

Newland almost shook his head. Almost. “I had a couple of drinks at the Last Call.”

A couple of drinks to the tune of about seven. Two of moonshine was enough to put anybody in a stupor. But seven? He was lucky he could move today. That didn’t take into account his strength last night. Or maybe it was her weakness?

“You drank moonshine?” Aubie asked his eyes wide. “Cool!”

Natalie shot her brother a look. “Not cool.” That stuff would eat someone’s liver out, and she wanted to make sure Aubie didn’t have any part of it. It wasn’t like he could show his ID and prove he was underage to the bootleggers. Darrell and Gilbert knew how old Aubie was, but that wouldn’t stop them from giving him some. They had been raised on the stuff.

“It’s good, huh?” Aunt Bitty’s eyes sparkled. “I knew we should have brought that up the other night. Maybe you wouldn’t have such an intolerance for it this morning.”

To Newland’s credit he flushed pink but only continued to sip his coffee.

“Aunt Bitty, you have moonshine in the cellar?” Aubie asked.

Her aunt scoffed. “Of course I do. What kind of Southern household would I be running if I didn’t have a couple quarts of moonshine stashed somewhere?”

Natalie wasn’t sure how to answer that. A legal household maybe?

“Can I have some?” Aubie asked.

“No,” Natalie said emphatically. “Aside from the fact that you’re underage and it’s illegal, I’m going to go with you’re the mayor and the mayor doesn’t need to be snockered.”

“Aww.” Aubie’s disappointment was palpable.

“Snockered?” Newland asked.

“It means drunk,” Aunt Bitty helpfully supplied with a knowing nod.

Something had to be done about this. And soon. Maybe she should talk to Gerald about getting with the sheriff and county commissioners and talking about the best way to clean up this illegal activity. Turtle Creek was a nice little town; the last thing they needed was the smear on their reputation from bootleggers. But before that, she needed to clean out her aunt’s stash. It’d been safe enough in the cellar when Aunt Bitty couldn’t make it down the stairs, but now that Newland had repaired them, it wouldn’t be quite so easy to keep that moonshine from her table.

Natalie dabbed her mouth, took one last drink of coffee, then stood. She turned to Newland. “Can I see you in the kitchen for a moment?”

He looked as if he was about to tell her no, then gave a careful nod and gingerly pushed to his feet.

Natalie turned back to her family. “If you’ll excuse us … ” She turned on her heel and made her way to the kitchen, all too aware of Newland Tran right behind her.

• • •

The barbarians had turned into evil leprechauns. They had multiplied by the thousands and were trying to tear his eyeballs out using dull spoons. Or something like that.

Newland put one foot in front of the other, cautious to hold himself steady as he walked behind Natalie to the kitchen. He didn’t know what she wanted to see him about, but at this point, with his head hurting this badly, there was no denying her anything.

“We need to do something about this moonshine.”

Damn straight
, he thought. But it was a little too late now. He had already drunk the stuff.

“I can’t have my underage brother thinking it’s cool that he can get moonshine in our county.” She shook her head, and Newland grabbed hold of the countertop edge to keep from falling. Wait, he hadn’t moved. But her motion was enough to make him dizzy.

Damn that stuff was rough. If only he’d known last night what he knew this morning.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a brief moment trying to block out the light and the lingering smells of today’s breakfast. He didn’t think he’d ever eat again. He hadn’t actually gotten stick, but he was feeling bad enough that it didn’t matter. He didn’t want anything to do with moonshine anytime soon.

“Are you okay?”

“No. I’ve got a hangover like a son of a bitch, and I would like nothing more than to go back to bed.”

She gave him a dry look. “So go.”

There was no way he could go back to bed; he had things to do. He still had yet to figure out about Bitty’s ghost, and he was wondering more and more if there was a story in all this bootlegging going on. The sheriff was in on it, and the bars were serving it. It had to be some sort of record, even for the South.

“Hold on a sec.” Natalie turned around so fast that Newland clutched the countertop again. He knew it was only a matter of time before his body settled down. But he needed to lie down in order to make things go away. He had too much to do to feel like this. This was the most hungover he’d ever been in his life. Including college. And that was saying a lot.

But if he thought her turning around was bad, the rest of her actions nearly sent him to the ground. She bent down to retrieve the blender from under the cabinet, went to the refrigerator, and started pulling out things. Hot sauce, eggs, a can of tomato juice, celery, olives, and something else he couldn’t see. Then without a word she started dumping everything into the blender. Before he knew it she set a glass of thick-looking red liquid in front of him.

“Here.”

“What is that?” He wasn’t about to just drink it. Most of what she had put in it was disgusting.

“It’s a sure headache/hangover cure.”

Newland eyed it skeptically. “What does it do? Make me throw up so much that I don’t care I’m hungover anymore?”

Natalie shook her head. “This may come as quite a surprise to you but my mother and father lead a very active social life. I learned to make these when I was still in high school. Now drink up. It’ll take care of it.”

Newland wasn’t sure what was worse, the throbbing in his head or the fact that she had learned a hangover cure in high school that wasn’t even for her.

On the outside it seemed she had the perfect life—sweet sports car, beautiful clothes, the charming job of telling everybody in her life what to do, but in the last couple of days he’d come to realize that there were more ghosts than she let on. The glass in front of her was proof enough of that. And these ghosts didn’t just show up every last Thursday of the month.

“Would you drink it, please?” Her tone turned soft and beseeching. “I need your help. And I know you can’t help me with the way your head’s hurting now.”

He reached for it and took a tentative sip. But she shook her head. “Drink it. All down in one gulp, maybe two but no more.”

Still he hesitated.

“Just drink it.”

Newland was starting to give credit to his throwing up idea but decided that since she’d taken the time to make him this cure, he was at least going to try it. He picked up the glass and fought the urge to plug his nose with the other hand and started to drink. He managed to get it down in three big gulps. Though he wasn’t sure how long it was going to stay there. It seemed to have enough hot sauce in it to kill him, but the heat wasn’t his biggest concern. He looked back at the counter where two eggshells lay empty and broken, their contents no doubt added to the drink he’d just consumed.

No, he wasn’t going to throw up. He could do this. He could. He’d done tougher things in his life, had been through more. He could handle a spicy cup of tomato juice with raw eggs. It wasn’t a big deal. All he had to do was sit there and not think about it. Not think about how bad his head was hurting. Not think about how this latest edition was not willing to stay down for long. Do not think about it, do not think about —

“It’s not working.”

Natalie checked the marigold decorated clock that hung over the sink. “Give it a minute.”

He wasn’t sure he could. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle his head or his churning stomach for much longer.

“Just a couple more minutes now,” Natalie said.

Newland resisted the urge to shake his head at it all. He could do this. He could—

“My head … ”

“What about it?”

Newland blinked a couple of times then pushed his sunglasses to the top of his head. “It … It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

She chuckled. “I told you. Now can you help me?”

He moved his jaw from side to side and tilted his head, testing the scope of her hangover cure. “That’s a miracle. You should sell it.”

Natalie shook her head.

“We wouldn’t need it if we didn’t have moonshine, now would we? And that’s what I want you to do. Help me get the moonshine out of Aunt Bitty’s cellar.”

“You having a party or something?”

Natalie shot him a look. “She’s eighty-five years old. She does not need to be drinking moonshine.”

“If you ask me, eighty-five’s the perfect age to drink moonshine. Eighty-five is the perfect age to do whatever the hell you want to do.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. I’ve got enough to do without you adding fuel to the fire.”

He chuckled in spite of himself, but her look remained serious. “Why do you want to do that? Why take it away from her?”

“Now that the stairs are fixed I’m afraid that she’ll get down there and start nipping on it. Then the next thing I know, she’s got a broken hip and we have to life flight her to Memphis.”

“Do they life flight you for a broken hip?”

“Newland! Pay attention. Will you help or not?”

It really wasn’t any of his business. It wasn’t any of his business to help Natalie, and it wasn’t any of his business whether or not Bitty Duncan had moonshine in her cellar. But he supposed that if he moved it from the cellar up into the kitchen, that would save Bitty from falling down the cellar stairs.

“Okay.”

Her features softened. “Thank you.” She turned on her heel, evidently expecting him to follow as she made her way toward the back of the house.

Thankful that each step was not excruciatingly painful, Newland followed behind her through the house, the screened-in porch, out on the regular porch, then into the yard. They rounded the house to the cellar doors lying crookedly on the ground.

He looked back at Natalie, taking in her outfit before giving a shake of his head. She was dressed to the nines as usual. It was Saturday but she still wore matching jewelry, a form-hugging dress, and four-inch heels.

If you dress like this every day, what do you do for an encore?
But that question brought to mind those satiny pajamas she’d worn last night and that short robe of baby pink that made her skin glow like new milk and her eyes shine like the sky after a cleansing rain.