Spring Fever (36 page)

Mason dropped onto his unmade bed and pulled the sheet up at the same time he glanced at the clock radio on the nightstand. It was just after 11:00
P.M.
He bunched his pillow under his head. The pillowcase was warm! He turned on his side and a pair of sinuous bare arms wrapped around his own bare shoulders.

“Surprise!” Celia whispered.

“Jesus H.!” Mason exclaimed. He sat bolt upright in the bed and switched on the lamp. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Celia blinked rapidly. “For goodness sake,” she said, laughing. “It’s not like I broke in. I have a key, remember?”

She gave him a lazy smile and raised the hem of the sheet to show him that she was completely nude. “I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said, propping herself up on one elbow to give him an even better vantage point. She reached for his hand and placed it on her right breast.

He snatched it back.

“This isn’t funny, Celia,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed. “It’s not supposed to be funny, darling,” she said slowly. “It’s supposed to be a turn-on. Do you have any idea how many men fantasize about coming home and finding a nude blonde in their beds?”

“I am not one of those guys,” Mason said flatly.

She sat up in the bed, allowing the sheet to fall around her waist to give him a better understanding of the extent of her endowment. And she was admittedly gifted in that particular department. Celia’s breasts would probably be considered one of the seven wonders of the modern world to any other man with a pulse. But right now they didn’t do a thing for him. God help him. She parted her lips slightly and gave him a come-hither look that had once had an appalling effect on him. Now? Nada.

“Don’t do this,” he said.

“Do what?” She slid closer to him on the bed and casually rested her hand on his crotch. He jumped as though he’d been bitten by a rattlesnake.

He picked her hand up and dropped it onto the sheet. “That,” he said, frowning. “I’ve had a hell of a long day, and I am really not in the mood for this kind of a stunt.”

“It’s not a stunt,” she said, looking hurt. “I’m trying to remind you of why we got together in the first place. It’s been so long. I love you and I’ve missed you. Is that a crime?”

He shook his head. “Does Sophie know you’re here?”

“No,” she said. “She and Letha were both sound asleep when I let myself in an hour ago. Which reminds me. Where have you been all night? And don’t tell me you were at the office, because I checked, and your car was gone.” She leaned in closer and sniffed. “You’ve been drinking wine?”

“I was out,” Mason said. “Having dinner with Annajane.” Maybe, he thought, his mood black, if he infuriated her enough, Celia would leave.

“Oh Annajane,” Celia said with a dismissive shrug. “Did you tell her about the baby? Or are we going to let Bonnie Kelsey break the news to her?”

“She knows,” Mason said. He stood up, looked around, and saw where she’d neatly folded her clothes on the armchair at the foot of the bed. He snatched them up and threw them at her. “Come on, Celia. Get dressed. I don’t want Sophie to wake up and find you here.”

“Darling, please come back to bed and stop being such a prude,” Celia said, patting the mattress. “We’ve made love lots of times right here in this bed with her in the next room, and it never bothered you before.”

It actually
had
bothered him, he thought ruefully. But not enough to induce him to turn Celia out of his bed.

“I was a hypocrite,” Mason said. “That stops now.” He jerked his head in the direction of the door. “Please go.”

“And what if I won’t?” Celia said playfully. “Are you going to pick me up and bodily throw me out of the house? With Sophie and Letha sleeping right next door?” She gave a look of mock horror.

Mason’s face hardened. He stomped into the bathroom and pulled on the clothes he’d just removed. He went back to the bedroom and sat on the armchair.

“Look,” he said. “Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be. You and I are going to have to come to some kind of an arrangement.”

“I can’t wait to hear this,” Celia said. “Do explain.”

He hesitated. “I am willing to marry you, and be a father to our child. But that will be the extent of my obligation to you. I’m not in love with you, and I won’t pretend to be.”

She arched an eyebrow. “So … you’re telling me you’ll live with me, but you won’t make love to me?”

He recoiled for a moment. “If that’s how you choose to put it, yes.”

Celia laughed. “That’s so noble of you, Mason. So gentlemanly. And what if I tell you I don’t want to marry you under those conditions? In fact, what would you say if I told you I might decide not to have the baby after all?”

He felt his heart contract. “You wouldn’t do that,” Mason said. “Because that baby is the only hold you have over me.” He looked at her coolly. “I no longer kid myself that you’re infatuated with me. I realize you only got involved with me because you had some notion of a payday.”

“You have such a low opinion of yourself,” Celia said. “It never occurred to you I fell in love with you?”

“It did,” he admitted. “But then I realized what a fool I’ve been.”

She leaned forward. “I really do love you, you know. I could make you happy, if you’d let me.”

“Don’t insult my intelligence,” Mason said. “Just go, would you?”

Celia’s eyes blazed. “If I leave here tonight, Mason, it will be for good. I mean that. You won’t see me, or our child, again. Ever. You see, I’m an all-or-nothing kind of girl.”

It was the one threat he feared, the thing that had gnawed at his gut since the moment she’d told him about the baby. He knew Celia would think nothing of depriving the baby of a father, if it meant getting vengeance against him. The idea of her raising his child, his own flesh and blood, gave him a sick, terrifying feeling. He would do anything in his power to keep that from happening. And she knew that, of course.

Celia knew she’d won. She leaned back against the headboard, allowing the sheet to slip downward again. “I’m tired,” she said, raising her arms over her head for an exaggerated stretch. “It’s much too late for a woman in my condition to be driving around at night. Anyway, we have a wedding to plan, don’t we? How’s Saturday for you?”

“I’ll leave that up to you,” Mason said. “But no church. No reception, none of that. Just you, me, and a justice of the peace.”

“You really know how to romance a woman,” Celia said bitterly.

“This isn’t about romance. It’s about duty. And decency,” he added. “If you won’t leave, I will. Just make sure you’re gone before Sophie wakes up in the morning.”

“Where do you think you’re going?” Celia demanded.

“Anywhere but here,” Mason said.

33

Annajane smelled baked goods as she opened the door into the Pinecone’s office-slash-lounge. “Well, hello!” Harold was dressed in a different Hawaiian shirt and baggy blue jeans. He wore a faded baseball cap, and he was setting a tray with mugs and saucers on one of two bistro tables by the window. “I’m so glad you came in.”

“Thomas?” he called out.

Another tall, skinny, bald man with a long nose came bustling out from what must have been the kitchen. He looked enough like Harold to be his twin brother, but he was wearing a white butcher’s apron, and he held an enormous napkin-covered basket of muffins.

“You’re just in time; these are still warm from the oven,” the baker said, setting the basket down on the table with the mugs. “These are date-nut muffins. My grandmother’s recipe.”

“Thomas, this is Annajane, the young lady I told you about earlier. She’s going to stay with us for the week. And she works at Quixie. Isn’t that fun?”

“Very fun,” Thomas agreed. He held out his hand, which was dusted with flour; wiped it on his apron; and then extended it again. “So nice to meet you. I guess Harold told you we’re complete Quixie fanatics. I’m serious. It’s … so essentially southern tasting. Like grits or homemade peach ice cream. It tastes like Dixie, right?”

Annajane’s eyes widened. “What did you just say?”

“What? The part about it being better than grits? Or the part about it tasting like Dixie?” Thomas asked.

“Ohmygod!” Annajane breathed. She reached for the pen on the reception desk and started scribbling. Then she turned around, waved the paper under Thomas’s nose, and proceeded to kiss him on the mouth.

“What was that for?” he asked, clearly startled.

“I think you just came up with our new slogan,” she told him. “Quixie—the Taste of Dixie!”

“I did that?” Thomas said, looking pleased.

She nodded enthusiastically.

“I did that!” Thomas told his partner.

Harold rolled his eyes. “There’ll be no living with the man now. He’s been tinkering with making Quixie muffins, you know. He’s gone completely bonkers over the stuff.”

“Totally kooky, right?” Thomas said. “So far, I can’t get the consistency right, but I’m not giving up. I know there has to be a way to bake with that stuff.”

Annajane sat down at the table, and Harold and Thomas joined her. Thomas poured her a mug of coffee, and she inhaled the fumes gratefully before taking a sip.

It was funny. Her life had come apart at the seams last night, and yet here she was, calmly having coffee and muffins with a pair of total strangers, still chatting about Quixie, selling the product for all she was worth.

Later on today, she would have to figure out how to start rebuilding a life for herself. But for right now, indulging in a decent cup of coffee and some hot sugary treats wasn’t a bad beginning to a new day. Plus she had a new slogan. So maybe the day didn’t totally suck. Yet.

“You know,” she said, reaching for a muffin and peeling the paper liner off. “The company did a Quixie cookbook, way back in the ’60s, I think. It has all kinds of crazy recipes in it—Quixie Jell-O salad, Quixie layer cakes, Quixie barbecue sauce. I’m sure there must be some kind of muffin recipe, too. I think there’s still a box of them somewhere around the office. I’ll bring you one if you like.”

“I’d love that,” Thomas said. “How long do you think you’ll be staying with us, Miss Annajane?”

“Just long enough to figure out what comes next.”

34

Annajane sat at her desk and forced herself to go through the motions of doing her job. It was the one thing she was good at. Doing her job. She dashed off a memo to Davis about her proposal for the new Quixie slogan and sent another to route sales, asking them to drop off six cases of soda at the Pinecone Motor Lodge.

Celia Wakefield had taken her man, but, so far, she hadn’t succeeded in destroying that last piece of her life.

She had decided on the drive in to work that she would keep her promise to Mason. And she intended to go out with a flourish. The summer campaign, she’d decided, would break all sales records. And then she would hit the road. Annajane had no intentions of hanging around to watch Celia’s belly grow and expand with Mason’s child.

As luck would have it, she was just pulling into her slot in the parking lot when Mason drove up. There was no time to duck down in the seat or pretend she hadn’t seen him. She took a deep breath and got out of the car and locked it. She could maintain her dignity and act as though nothing had happened between them. Because essentially, nothing had. Or would.

“Good mor…” she started to say, but she thought better of it when she got a good look at him.

Mason’s eyes were heavily shadowed, his hair uncombed. He obviously hadn’t showered or shaved, and he was dressed in the same clothes he’d worn to dinner the night before.

“Are you all right?” she asked, picking a pine needle from the sleeve of his shirt.

“Fine,” he said, hoisting the strap of his briefcase onto his shoulder.

“You look like hell,” Annajane said. “Didn’t you go home after you left me last night?”

“I did,” Mason said, trying unsuccessfully to smooth his hair. “But Celia was there. In my bed,” he added, with a scowl. “So I took an impromptu camping trip.”

“Camping?” Annajane asked, bewildered.

“I slept at the lake house,” Mason said, his tone sour. “Or tried to, anyway. Between the raccoons and the pigeons roosting in the rafters, I didn’t get much rest.”

He eyed her warily. “How about you? How was the Pinecone?”

“Delightful,” she said. “I slept like a baby.”

“Glad to hear somebody did,” he muttered. They were standing at the employee entrance to the plant. He held the door open for her.

“Annajane,” he started.

“Mason, I really need to get in and get started on my work,” she told him. She squared her shoulders and headed down the hall. “We’ve gotta sell some cherry soda today.”

*   *   *

Once at her desk, she spent half an hour scanning online job listings for marketing positions. She e-mailed her résumé to a couple of former colleagues from her Raleigh days and called Joe Capheart to let him know she’d used him as a reference.

Then she got back down to soft drink business. She went to the break room and begrudgingly fed four quarters into the vending machine for a can of Quixie, hoping for some kind of inspiration.

As always, the combination of carbonation and the sharp-sweet taste of cherries gave her a start. Quixie was something special, she reminded herself, something worth saving.

She got a begrudging “Good idea” e-mail back from Davis, approving the new “Taste of Dixie” slogan. Then she spent the morning on the phone, talking to bottle manufacturers about copying the Quixie glass bottle from the ’50s. She’d located the old molds from the bottles in a dusty corner of the warehouse, and now her challenge was to find a company willing to copy the old molds and start producing new bottles immediately.

There was a soft tap on her office door. Before Annajane could call out, the door opened and Voncile stepped inside. “Annajane? Can I talk to you?”

“Sure,” Annajane said, rolling her chair away from her desk. “What’s up?”

Voncile closed the door and locked it, then sat nervously in a chair opposite the desk, pulling the skirt of her sensible brown cotton skirt even farther down over her knees.