Beneath Southern Skies Read online

  He’d had no idea that she was dying.

  “So we’ll dedicate the night to her memory,” he suggested with a cheerfulness that he was nowhere near feeling. “She’d like that.”

  “Hmm, I think she would also approve of what you’re trying to do for your hometown. It’s a special little place.”

  “It was to her.”

  His ancestors had lived in Mercy since the slaves were emancipated, and Merlene had lived and breathed the town. As for him—well, it had always been a nice place to live as long as he’d actually had to. But the minute he was old enough to start dreaming about places far, far away, he had started planning his escape route. Still, Mercy was special—Julia was right about that. His mother would never forgive him if he didn’t at least try to save it.

  Julia’s voice broke into his thoughts. “So I’ll see you in, what? A couple of days? A week?”

  “Maybe a little longer. There’s a town-hall meeting scheduled for tomorrow that I want to sit in on, and then I have a meeting the day after that. So we’ll see how it goes.”

  After hanging up, Nate tossed his cell phone back into the passenger seat, only to have it ring again. He snatched it up again. “Woodberry.”

  “When you said you were coming home today, did you mean today or did you mean next month today?” a deep, gravelly voice asked.

  He rolled his eyes to the roof of the car and took a breath for patience. “I’m driving into town as we speak, Jasper,” he drawled. He rolled to a halt at the stoplight in front of the funeral home that Jasper Holmes owned and tooted his horn loud enough to be heard inside the three-story building. Jasper lived in the bachelor’s apartment on the top floor. “Did you hear that, old man?”

  “That you?”

  “Yep. You need anything while I’m in the area?” If he’d ever had an uncle, which he hadn’t, he probably would’ve been just like Jasper Holmes, Nate thought as he idled at the red light. Growing up, he had never quite cleaved to Jasper the way most of the town’s kids had, seeing him as a surrogate father figure, but the two of them had always had a grudging respect for one another. “Dinner? Your medicine? An ass-kicking in dominoes?”

  Jasper cackled heartily at the thinly veiled but good-natured threat. “You wish, boy. You wish. I might take you up on that tomorrow sometime, though. Right now I’m thinking about putting some ribs in the smoker out back. Hallie Norris called me this morning and said that Elaine Gordon told her that Jessie down at Hayden’s Diner told her that Juanita Valentine’s granddaughter popped up in town the other day. Jessie says she’s been ordering takeout from the diner morning, noon and night, and we both know how Willie Burnett’s cooking can burn a hole in your gut. So I figured I might smoke a few pieces of meat, whip up some potato salad and see if I could talk Lilly Davis into throwing some stuff into a pot and ending up with her version of spaghetti. Figured the least we could do is feed the girl. Juanita was good people. She—”

  Nate hadn’t listened to a word Jasper had said past hearing that Juanita Valentine’s granddaughter was in town. “Wait a minute. Did you just say that Tressie Valentine is in town?”

  “Yeah,” Jasper confirmed. “Been here since the day before yesterday, the way I hear it. She’s staying in Juanita’s house. Well, I guess it’s her house now, but—”

  “Do me a favor and hold up on setting out a buffet, okay? Let me look into some things and I’ll call you back.”

  Nate disconnected the call and made a U-turn on two wheels in the middle of Main Street. Ignoring the blaring horns of drivers who had been suddenly and illegally cut off, he drove back the way he had come. Less than a hundred feet from the Welcome to Mercy, Georgia, sign at the entrance to town and directly across the street from the Greyhound bus station was a one-way road that circled around to the east side of town and opened up to a small cluster of residential streets. The area ran alongside a dense, wooded thatch and, years ago, it had been separated from the rest of the town by wrought-iron gates at each end. The houses inside the gates were the largest in Mercy, rambling three- and four-story structures that only the handful of wealthy residents in Mercy could afford to own. Beyond it, up on the hill, was the house that he and all of the other kids in Mercy had fondly referred to as the White House. Before the gates had been taken down, the farthest that he had ventured inside the gates had been to occasionally visit Moira Tobias, the owner of the White House. Now he made a beeline for another house, the one that Tressie Valentine had grown up in with her grandmother.

  Nate skidded to a stop behind the small sedan that was parked in the driveway and hopped out of the Navigator before the machine had fully registered the shift from Drive to Park. It was still shuddering when he took the steps leading to the wraparound front porch two at a time and rang the doorbell.

  Thirty seconds later and no response, he rang the doorbell again. Then again. Still no response. Cursing under his breath, he tried the doorknob. His eyebrows shot up in surprise when it turned easily and the door swung open.

  The first floor was clear, he discovered after checking out each room. Other than stacks of already packed boxes and flattened boxes waiting to be packed scattered everywhere, there was no sign of Tressie. He was wondering if she had gone out somewhere when he heard sounds of movement above his head. Exactly what the source of those sounds was didn’t register with him until he was already on the second floor and approaching the first door to his left—the door to the hall bathroom.

  The shower.

  It was going full blast and she was singing along with the water’s spray. No, that wasn’t quite right. Actually she was singing—horribly—over and above the water’s spray. The sound of her voice scraped across his nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard, spiking his irritation level into orbit. Without stopping to think about what he was doing, he barged into the steamy bathroom and snatched the shower curtain back.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he bellowed.

  Chapter 2

  She turned just as a blast of cool air slammed into her skin, and then visions of warriors rushing in for battle flashed before her eyes—big, strapping men with bulging muscles, bloodthirsty expressions on their faces, and mighty swords slicing through the air. She saw herself being impaled to death and then buried in a shallow grave deep in the woods, where no one would ever find her. She saw, as plain as day, the likelihood that no one would even bother to look for her because the sad fact was that she wasn’t the most popular person in the world and she had no real friends to speak of. Every questionable deed that she’d ever done played before her eyes like a movie. Her killer would go unpunished and her death would be in vain. The public would probably celebrate once her true identity was revealed. They would—

  Oh, God. She was going to die.

  Partially blinded by soap bubbles and completely on the verge of hysteria, Tressie opened her mouth and did the only thing she could think to do under the circumstances. She screamed at the top of her lungs.

  It seemed like an eternity, but it really took only a few seconds to wipe the soap bubbles from her eyes and focus. When she did, the first thing she saw through the steam was a pair of gorgeous hazel eyes staring into hers. Expanding her gaze to a wide-screen view, she took in a pair of perfectly shaped lips and a dimpled chin, thick eyebrows and smooth pecan-brown skin. Something in her brain eventually clicked and she recognized Nate Woodberry, but that didn’t stop her from continuing to scream like a banshee. The only difference was that this time the sounds she made were intelligible. “What the hell,” she shrieked frantically as she snatched the shower curtain from his grasp and wrapped it around her body, “are you doing in here?”

  “I rang the bell. You didn’t answer.” He was the epitome of calm.

  “So you just walk right on in and make yourself at home?” She slung her wet hair back and out of her face and shut off the water
. “Idiot! Hand me a towel from over there, would you?” She snatched the towel he handed her and only released her death grip on the shower curtain long enough to make the trade. The fact that he had undoubtedly seen more of her naked body in the past thirty seconds than her doctor had in years burned her skin to a cherry-red crisp, especially since he hadn’t so much as given it a second glance in all that time. So much for cutting back on sweets and working out like a demon.

  “Well?” they said in unison.

  “Well, what?” they said in harmony again.

  And then again in unison, “What are you doing here?”

  “You first,” Tressie said, securing the knot in her towel and stepping out of the old-fashioned claw-foot tub.

  “No, sugar, you first.” Nate folded his arms across his chest and stared her down. “You were told to stay the hell away from Mercy, Georgia, but yet here you are. Why is that, Vanessa Valentino?”

  She resisted the urge to wince at the menacing way he said her trade name. Of the handful of people who knew that she was the pen behind the persona, unfortunately he had always been the least complimentary about it. “I’m sorry. Did I miss the memo that named you the king of my comings and goings?” She folded her arms underneath her breasts and looked at him from head to toe, then rolled her eyes. “Just because you had a bug up your ass about a story I was writing five years ago doesn’t mean you can order me around for the rest of my life. News flash, Nate. It was a long time ago. The rest of the world has moved on. You should, too.”

  “What, you think I’ve spent the last five years checking for you?”

  “Well, you are standing in my bathroom right now, aren’t you?” She looked up at him thoughtfully. “Tell me something, Nate. How did you even know that I was here? Which one of your little minions do you have keeping track of my every movement?”

  He caught his mouth before it could drop open. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Says the man who’s hunted me down like a fugitive for the second time in less than a decade.”

  “You are a fugitive.”

  Now it was her turn to catch her mouth before it could drop open. “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what you do, right? Hide behind a fake name and a fake persona so you don’t have to face the consequences of destroying people’s lives with the stroke of a pen? That’s you, right? A hack, so-called journalist, with nothing better to do than dig around in people’s private lives, because you have no life of your own? A coward who throws stones and then hides her hands? If the public knew who you really were, you’d never get another night’s sleep.”

  Almost word for word, he was spouting the same speech now that he had given her five years ago, except that he wasn’t shouting the roof off this time. She didn’t know which was worse—enraged and volatile Nate, or the calm, almost reasonable-sounding Nate standing in front of her now. Either way, she wasn’t in the mood for a replay of five years ago, especially since she hadn’t exactly come out on top in the aftermath. Every time she thought about the way she had allowed him to bully her into dropping the story of a lifetime—and she had thought about it a lot over the years—she wanted to kick herself. If she had held her ground back then she would’ve been a wealthy woman right now. More than wealthy, she thought sourly. Probably rich. And none of the chaos that was currently going on in her life would be happening.

  Was she pissed at the way things had turned out? Hell, yes.

  Had she stood there five years ago like a deer caught in headlights and allowed Nate to insult her nonstop? Yes, she had.

  That was then and this was now. He had won back then, and there was nothing she could do about that now. She wasn’t about to let him terrorize her again. She had too much riding on this visit to Mercy and, thankfully, it had nothing to do with him.

  But just to be on the safe side, she took a full step back from him before throwing one of the stones he’d mentioned. “You know, it’s funny that you mention me not having a life, when you’re the one who’s dedicated his entire life to chasing after another man’s woman. Where’s the dignity in that, Nate, huh?”

  He went stone still and his eyes narrowed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said quietly.

  Shut up, Tressie. Shut up now. “Oh, of course you do. I was here back then, too, remember? You were so in love with Pamela Mayes that you couldn’t see straight. Always trailing behind her and her boyfriend, hoping she would throw you a scrap of attention whenever she happened to look around and notice you there. But she never did, did she? What was his name? The boy she chose over you? Oh, that’s right. Chad Greene. Your best friend. Some friend you are.”

  “Watch yourself, Tressie.”

  “It was a sordid little story for a while there, and isn’t it a shame that I didn’t get to tell it.”

  “You didn’t need to tell it. It was none of your business.”

  “Whatever,” Tressie snapped, flapping a dismissive hand at him. “Like I said, it was five years ago. I kept up my end of the deal, so what do you want with me now?” The deal. Just thinking about it put a sour taste in her mouth.

  When he had shown up at her office at the Inquisitor, some obviously delusional part of her mind had actually thought that he was there to invite her out to lunch or, even better, dinner. True, they didn’t exactly run in the same journalistic circles, but they had just run into each other in Mercy, when she had gone home for Ma’Dear’s funeral, and the vibe between them had been good. At least she’d thought so. Apparently her radar for gauging a man’s interest was seriously out of order, because not only couldn’t he have been less interested in taking her out to dinner, but he’d been on the verge of shaking her silly.

  Accusations had been hurled and the shouting had been almost unbearable, and that was just on his part. For her part, she’d barely been able to get a word in. By the time he had calmed down long enough to issue a parting ultimatum, she’d been in tears. Drop the story, he’d said, or get ready for the world to know who she really was. It would’ve been a career-ending move, and no matter how badly she wanted to write columns that would bring the public to its knees, she couldn’t risk it.

  And he’d known that.

  Bastard.

  “I want you not to make me take you to the mat again,” Nate said ominously. “Because you know I will.”

  “For what?” Disbelief had her rearing back and staring up at him as if he was crazy, which very likely could’ve been the case. Studies had shown that some of the most attractive men in history had been quietly, secretly insane, and Nate Woodberry was way beyond attractive. He was tall and wrapped from head to toe in the kind of muscle that couldn’t be earned in a gym, and his smile, whenever he was moved to reveal it, which wasn’t very often it seemed, was just lopsided enough, just devilish enough to conjure up images of all kinds of X-rated deeds. His hair, when it wasn’t secured at the nape of his neck in a roguish ponytail, was an inky black curtain that draped his shoulders and hung down his back in silky waves. And when they weren’t narrowed to slits, his hazel eyes were sleepy-looking, as if he had just rolled out of bed. Any woman with a pulse would be tempted to roll him right back into bed upon first sight of him. Love didn’t immediately come to mind when you set eyes on him, but pure and simple lust damn sure did.

  Quite frankly, he was a spectacular-looking man, which meant that the odds of his being completely off his rocker were greater than most. And here she was, naked except for a wash-worn towel and all alone with him in a nearly soundproof house. The way things were going, he could snap any second now, and what could she do? Beat him off with a towel that was probably just as old as she was?

  “You know what?” Tressie said, mentally switching gears and frantically shooing him out of her way. “Forget I asked. I can’t deal with you right now, so I think it’s time for you to go.” She was surprised when
he actually stepped aside, but she wasn’t about to waste a second of precious time thanking him. As soon as the way was clear, she made a beeline for the open door and the hallway on the other side of it. The bedroom she was using was directly across from the bathroom. Gripping her towel and walking fast, she headed toward it, praying every step of the way.

  Walking just as fast behind her, Nate cuffed her arm and brought her skipping back to him two steps shy of her goal. “Just a second, sugar. I want to make sure we’re clear on something before you go back into hiding.” He dipped his head and put his face in her face. “Are you listening?”

  Momentarily thrown off balance by the sheer impact of him, Tressie couldn’t find her voice. Good lord, the man was even more gorgeous up close. Some other part of her brain, some irrational, hypersexual part, wondered what he would do if she closed the inch separating his lips from hers and sucked his bottom lip into her mouth. Just curious, she’d say when he asked her what the hell she thought she was doing. Did he taste as good as he looked? Inquiring, sexually deprived minds suddenly wanted to know.

  Pamela Mayes would know, she thought as her stricken gaze made its way down to the lips in question. Nate had been romantically linked to hundreds of high-profile women over the years, and somehow none of them had ever managed to drag him down the aisle. Whenever the topic of his lingering bachelorhood had come up in any of the personal interviews that he sometimes came out of seclusion and granted, he’d always rattled off some nonsense about not having found the right woman yet. But Tressie knew better. He had found the right woman years ago and let her slip through his fingers. All the other women that he’d romanced had just been extremely well-endowed, picture-perfect substitutes.

  That information alone would’ve guaranteed sales in the hundreds of thousands if she’d been allowed to write even a fraction of the story.

  Pamela Mayes was a country girl turned megasuperstar. She had turned her humble beginnings as an orphan here in Mercy, Georgia, into platinum records and multiple Grammy awards, stints on reality TV shows and, just this past year, a series of designer fragrances and a new makeup line. She was a household name, having been compared to legendary songbirds such as Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey when it came to vocal style and ability, and hottie newcomer celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian when it came to the scandal factor. As a result, the public loved her and the media dogged her every move.