Cheri on Top (9 page)

Chapter 10

The tap on the door made Cherise raise her head from the computer screen. When she saw it was Gladys Harbison, a little hum of disappointment traveled through her.

As hard as it was to admit, she’d hoped it might be J.J. She couldn’t go much longer without talking to him about what the hell had really happened with Tanyalee and why—God,
why
—he had blamed Cherise for their divorce. It was driving her crazy. But J.J. had managed to avoid her all morning, almost as if he knew Cherise was on to him.

It made perfect sense, of course. Jackasses rarely enjoyed being called on their jackassish-ness.

“Where do you want me to put these?” Gladys asked, bent over by the weight of the documents, which did wonders for the view of crinkly flesh down the front of her peasant blouse. Cherise averted her eyes. She jumped from her desk chair, relieved Gladys of the stack, and placed it in the far corner of the room. With all the accumulating paperwork, the office was already in a state of disorganization, but with the addition of the painting supplies, ladders, and drop cloths, it had advanced to chaos.

“You sure you want this room painted gray?” Gladys asked, looking around. “Won’t it be depressing?”

Cherise chuckled softly, knowing the wall color was the least of her depression-causing concerns. She gestured to the paint can. “The color’s called Tradewind Azure.”

“Funny name for gray. Here.” Gladys held out the nameplate Cherise had given her the day before. “You left this on my desk by accident.”

Cherise raised her hand, palm out. “Actually, I left it for you along with a note asking that you correct the spelling error.”

She frowned. “I thought you meant there was an error on the ad sales summary. I’ve been looking for a misspelling all morning!” Gladys adjusted her bifocals and held the shiny brass up to the light. “I don’t see anything wrong with this.”

“It’s just that I prefer Cherise. C-h-e-r-i-s-e. Would you mind arranging for a reorder?”

Gladys shrugged. “You’re the boss. But it’s gonna take a couple weeks. I’ll have to redo all the business cards, too, I suppose.” She put a fist on her hip. “That’s why I did all this in advance, you know, so you’d feel welcome, so you’d walk in and know where it was you were supposed to sit and all.”

Cherise smiled again. “That was very kind of you.”

“Just doing my job.”

“Gladys, could you stay for a minute? There’s something I want to discuss with you.”

The secretary nodded, moved aside a large canvas drop cloth, and sat in a chair across from Cherise’s desk. Her skirt rode up, displaying a complex web of varicose veins and a pair of platform ankle-strap heels more often seen on women one fourth her age. Gladys crossed her arms over her low-cut peasant blouse.

“You probably want to talk to me about the Barbara Jean Smoot case, right? Because I was working here in 1964 and I remember that day—complete pandemonium.”

Cherise hadn’t expected that offer. “Uh, no. I mean, not really. I’m not a reporter. But you could tell J.J. what you remember from that day. I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

“Already did.”

“All right.”

“So this is about my outfits, then?”

Cheri pulled her head back in surprise. “Excuse me?”

“I told Garland I was fine with you steppin’ in as publisher and all, but that I wasn’t about to stop dressin’ the way I like to dress, the way that makes me feel beautiful, so don’t even start with me about that.” She raised her heavily penciled brows, waiting for a challenge.

“Uh.” Cherise paused, trying to collect herself. “I just wanted to ask you about the way the financial records are kept here at the
Bugle
.”

“Oh.” Gladys waved her hand through the air. “Ask away, then.”

Cherise had to stop herself from laughing out loud. For six months now, she’d really believed that she’d been in the thick of doing her penance. All this time, she thought the bill collectors, the empty studio apartment, the crappy car, the sparse wardrobe, the temp bookkeeping jobs, the worry, the embarrassment, the regret—she’d thought
that
was the price she would be paying for an ego run wild. Not so, apparently. All that had only been a warm-up for the purgatory that was Bigler, North Carolina.

“Purnell should really be the one to answer your questions. I just do what he tells me.”

“I understand,” Cherise said, nodding politely. “But Purnell doesn’t seem to spend much time in the building. He hasn’t returned any of my calls.”

“Oh, since the cutbacks he’s always off visiting with clients personally and selling ad space. He’s a real people person.”

He’s sure as hell not a numbers person,
Cherise thought, folding her hands on the desktop. “So tell me about the bookkeeping routine, Gladys.”

*   *   *

Gladys was a terrible driver, which wouldn’t have been any of Cherise’s business if she weren’t riding shotgun in the DeVille, hanging halfway out the window to steady the poorly tied-down set of bedding.

“Holy hell, Gladys! Slow down! I’m losing the pillow top!”

“Sorry,” she said with a shrug, taking another curve of Randall Road fast enough to cause her dangling feather earrings to smack against her cheeks. “When you’re my age, there’s no time to waste.”

“Well, I’m not ready to die, so slow down.”

“You’re the boss.”

Cherise shook her head and laughed. That seemed to be Gladys’s response to most every comment she’d made today.

Could you get me an extra charger for the BlackBerry?

You’re the boss
.

Would you please tell J.J. that I’ll be out for the rest of the day?

You’re the boss.

Would you mind driving over to Newberry Lake with me this afternoon?

You’re the boss.

Gladys lifted her platform shoe from the gas pedal and Cherise sighed with relief. “It’s up here at the top of the hill on the left.”

“Oh, I know where it is, Miss Cheri,” Gladys said, her coral-pink lips curving into a smile. “There was a time I came up here nearly every weekend. Your grandfather wasn’t always an old fart, you know. We used to have some big parties at that little house.”

Cherise cocked her head. “Seriously?”

Gladys took the turn onto Newberry Lane and howled with laughter. “Sweetie, I doubt you’ve ever been to a party better than the ones your granddaddy used to throw back in the day.”

She smiled to herself, thinking of all the parties she’d gone to in Tampa, Naples, Ocala, and South Beach—the most beautiful of beautiful people, the most private VIP rooms in the most exclusive clubs, and the most opulent private estates. Gladys’s idea of a good time was not quite the same as hers, obviously.

“Everybody’d show up with nothing but their swimsuits and a towel and spend the weekend.” Gladys wagged her eyebrows at Cherise.

“Say what?”

“Oh, yes. And there was plenty of booze. We’d put us some Elvis and Ray Charles and James Brown on the record player. There’d be dancing till the sweat poured and you had to go jump in the lake to cool off. Barbecue so tender it fell apart in your hands and the juices dripped off your elbow. Lots of sleeping under the stars. And sometimes there’d be marijuana. Personally, I never liked the way it made me feel—all out of control and silly like.”

Cherise swallowed hard. “Granddaddy Garland threw pot parties?”

“Oh, we never called ’em that. We just called them shindigs.”

Cherise pointed ahead. “The turnoff is on the left.”

“Like I said, I could find this place blindfolded.”

“So when was all this partying going on?”

“Back in the mid-fifties, before Garland married your grandmother—that put an end to all the fun, I’m afraid.”

Cherise was having trouble wrapping her brain around the house’s wild past. “What about Aunt Viv? Did she approve of these parties?”

Gladys roared. “What? She
was
the party! In fact, it was one of her boyfriends, a trumpet player from Charlotte, who brought along the wacky to-backy. Viv was real popular with the boys, if you know what I’m sayin’.”

Cherise frowned. No, she
didn’t
know what Gladys was saying. She refused to know what she was saying. “But Aunt Viv never married,” Cherise said.

“Ha! That wasn’t from lack of offers, let me tell you! She liked to play the field, is all.”

Cherise turned her face into the wind and used her free hand to rub her brow. What to do with this new information? Her grandfather hosted weekend bacchanals. And her great-aunt was the teenie-weenie-bikini-wearing town slut, dirty dancing to raunchy James Brown tunes with a pot-smoking, beatnik trumpet player. Cherise felt a sick headache coming on.

The BlackBerry rang.

She fumbled for the smartphone and saw it was J.J. Her heart began pounding. “Hello?”

“Where are you?”

Cherise sniffed. “Hello, J.J. I’m just fine. Thanks so much for asking.”

He chuckled. “And I’m fine, too, thanks. Now, where exactly are you?”

“Out of the office. I have some personal things to take care of. I borrowed Gladys for the day. We’re headed to … Asheville … to do some shopping.”

Cherise ignored Gladys’s clucking sounds.

“You have a paper to run, Miss Newberry.”

“Is there something I can do for you?”

“Nope—just wondering when you’ll be back in the newsroom.”

“Not till evening.”

“Have fun in Asheville.”
Click
.

Cherise took the phone from her ear and tossed it in her purse.

“My, my, my,” Gladys said. “Three days home and you’re already torturing that boy?”

Cherise fiddled with her hair. “My home is in Tampa, and I have no idea what you mean by ‘torturing.’”

“Uh-huh. Now, I don’t blame you. If I were only fifty years younger, or even forty years younger, oh, what the hell, even
thirty
years younger, I’d be all over—”

“Stop! Turn here!”

Gladys huffed. “Well, I never…” She shook her head at Cherise the whole way up the gravel lane. She stopped the car and turned off the engine, and the two women sat in silence for a moment.

“Sorry for cutting you off like that,” Cherise said.

Gladys shrugged. “You need to relax, Cheri. You’ve got nothing to worry about. He’s never wanted anyone but you, anyhow.”

In slow motion, Cherise cocked her head, not sure she’d heard right. “Excuse me?”

Then Gladys slapped Cherise on the shoulder playfully. “Now, just looky at what we got here!” Both women stared out the windshield at the army of workers swarming the cottage. There were at least a dozen men of various physical types, hues, and ages climbing on and milling around the house. Men pounded on the roof and the porch. They wiggled under crawl spaces. They perched on ladders. They shored up cracked stone. There were even men hacking away at the overgrowth and putting down mulch. Cherise counted six pickups, an electrician’s van, and a plumber’s truck.

“Granddaddy told me he’d hired some workers,” she whispered. “Boy, he wasn’t kidding!”

“He wants you to be happy here, I guess.” Gladys craned her neck to follow three shirtless men as they hauled a wooden beam down to the water’s edge. “I know
I’m
happy here.”

“Let’s just get this over with and get back to town.” Cherise managed to keep hold of the tie-downs while exiting the passenger side of the car. “Could you give me a hand with the—”

She froze. Her jaw fell open. She pressed the front of her thighs against the car for support, so she wouldn’t fall off the earth’s crust. Oh, god-
damn
, she couldn’t help it. What was
he
doing here? She would recognize him anywhere, in any context.

She watched him hand off his end of the wooden beam to another man. Then with one motion, he ripped off his T-shirt and tossed it to the grass, the muscles in his back rolling and twisting as he moved. It was a dance. It was a dance of male power and sexuality, and it made Cherise’s mouth go painfully dry.

She swallowed hard as she watched him stroll to the water’s edge, still in his work boots and a threadbare pair of jeans that showed off his ass to perfection. He jumped into the water. A second later he emerged with a big splash, twisting in midair, shaking his dark hair wildly and sweeping his hands over his face to shove the water from his eyes.

Cherise’s boot heel slipped in the gravel. She felt the blood rush, hot and violent, to that sweet spot between her legs.

This was so wrong. She shouldn’t be staring at J.J. like this. But how could she not? He was all wet and half naked, his muscular arms rising above his head to catch a piling being lowered into the water. The wooden beam must have weighed a ton because his biceps and triceps strained and bulged. His neck corded with effort and his chest—his bare, dripping-wet chest—rippled with the exertion.

Cherise let go of the rope she’d been clutching. She barely noticed the slow-motion slide of the box spring and mattress along the trunk and into the gravel.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Her knees shouldn’t be shaking. Her panties shouldn’t be wet. J.J. was a liar. He was cruel and rude and surly and …

Gorgeous.

Damn. J.J. was
gorgeous
.

And at just that instant, his lake-blue eyes flashed Cherise’s way. An instant of surprise showed on his face, just as the beam’s full weight settled in his hands. He looked away and frowned, concentrating as he lowered the wood into the water, his muscles undulating with the effort.

Gladys whistled low and soft. “Asheville, my wrinkly old ass,” she muttered.

Chapter 11

“Thank you for everything, Tater Wayne.” Cherise stepped away with satisfaction, relieved to see that the mattress and box spring fit perfectly inside the old iron frame in the front bedroom. It was the room her parents once shared, the one with an unobstructed view of the lake.

“Happy to help, but I really think it’s a bad idea to stay out here tonight. The house ain’t ready. Viv said—”

“
I’m
ready. I have everything I need.” She gestured to the boxes, suitcases, and plastic trash bags on the bedroom floor, stuffed with her clothes, linens, and kitchen things. Cherise patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll be fine, Tater.”

He scowled, which sent his left eyeball into a spasm. “There ain’t even any lights in here, except over the kitchen sink!” Tater threw his hands up in exasperation. “You know you can’t use the tub until the grout sets. There’s hardly a stick of furniture in this place, and I barely brought over enough firewood for one night!”

“It’ll be fine, Tater.”

“But Viv told me to make sure y’all went back to her place tonight. She said—”

“Doesn’t matter what she said.” Cherise motioned for Tater to exit the bedroom ahead of her, then shut the door behind them. It gave her great comfort to know there was one room, one little corner in Bigler, that was all hers.

“She’s gonna tan my hide.”

Cherise chuckled, walking behind Tater down the hallway. “You’re a grown man. Just tell her to fuck off.”

Tater spun around, his dirty blond hair whipping across his forehead, his eyebrows raised in shock. “You ever tell Vivienne Newberry to fuck off?”

Cherise had to acknowledge that she had not. “But I’m this close,” she said, holding up her thumb and index finger. That made him laugh.

The two of them strolled into the living room, still laughing, when Cherise caught sight of J.J. out in the front yard, close to the water’s edge. He had his back to her and he was still half naked. His jeans were soaked through, clinging to his lower half like a wet suit. Had his ass always been this tight? Had his thighs always been this cut? As she pondered these important questions, the sexual need sliced through her once more, hot and sharp. She gasped.

“Y’all all right?”

She whipped her head around to Tater. “Fine.”

He offered her a tentative smile. “It’s nice that J.J. pitched in. I didn’t ask him. Viv and Garland said they didn’t ask him, either—said it must have been his idea.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and tried her hardest to appear disinterested. “It’s a free country.”

Tater shook his head. He ran the toe of his work boot through a patch of sawdust that had drifted in from the new porch. “J.J.’s a good man, Cheri,” he said, looking up. “Seems not many people know how to be decent anymore, but he does. Y’all ought to try to be nice to each other again.”

Cherise’s mouth fell open in surprise.
Decent? J.J. DeCourcy?
Cherise decided to change the subject. “So how late y’all staying today, Tater?”

He sighed. “Not much longer. The sun’s getting ready to set. Most of us will be back tomorrow and we should finish up before supper, but we ain’t gonna get to cleaning the inside.”

She patted Tater on the shoulder. “I’ll take care of that.”

He frowned. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” she said, guiding him out onto the porch. “At least you got all the old moldy stuff out. In a way, I look forward to cleaning the place.”

“Don’t that beat all,” he said. “I figured you for the type that has a maid.”

Cherise laughed. “Oh, I used to, let me tell you. Those were the days.” When she glanced up at Tater’s confused expression, she was horrified by her own carelessness. She kept forgetting to remember that she was wealthy! “What I mean is I miss the housekeeping service I retain back in Tampa.”

“We got ’em here, too, you know. I’ll just make a phone call—”

“That’s okay. Anyway…” Cherise scanned the front yard for something else to talk about—anything else to talk about. She found it immediately. Gladys was making a beeline toward the slicked-down J.J., a hungry look in her heavily made-up eyes.

“I better get Gladys back to town before she makes a spectacle of herself,” she said, heading down the steps. “See you tomorrow, Tater.”

“That you will.”

Cherise made it as far as the gravel driveway that curved around the house when she stopped. J.J. had just lifted Gladys playfully off the grass. Gladys squealed and beat on his shoulders like she couldn’t stand the idea of being tossed around by a half-dressed man less than half her age. J.J. eventually put her down, laughing.

Cherise froze. Her face went hot. Her knees shook. Her chest felt like it was weighted down with a huge boulder of sadness. And just like that, she was on the edge of tears. Something about the sight of J.J. dripping wet and laughing, standing in the grass by the lake, the sun setting behind him … and her heart had begun to split open. Memories began to pour out.

The days she’d spent with J.J. before college were happy ones. She had no way of knowing it at the time, but she’d never experience happiness like that again. Not in a way that was so simple. Real. With so much laughter. Gentleness. Patience. Water, sunshine, kisses …

Her heart nearly exploded with joy that day he showed up on her doorstep in Tampa, the same old J.J., smiling, handsome, making her laugh, telling her he’d missed her like hell and refused to go another day without seeing her.

Maybe it had been so good with J.J. because she’d been loved and had loved in return—effortlessly.

Cherise heard herself gasp. She prayed no one else did. She turned on her heel and jogged to the DeVille, climbing behind the wheel. She started the engine, moved the car so it faced the main road, and waited for Gladys to get the hint that it was time to go.

With an eye on the rearview mirror, Cherise told herself she was crazy. She had to be PMS-ing. There was no other explanation.

Tears? Seriously? Tears for
what
? For
whom
?

Tears for a fantasy, that’s what. The J.J. she’d held in her most private heart for all those years wasn’t real. The real J.J. was the man who’d impregnated and then abandoned Tanyalee. The real J.J. couldn’t decide whether to kiss Cherise or slice her to ribbons with his sharp words.

She needed to remember that.

Gladys threw open the passenger side door and slid onto the white leather bucket seat, giggling like a middle schooler. Cherise drove back to town so fast that Gladys’s earrings swung against her cheeks and she clung to the overhead strap with a white-knuckled desperation.

“You’re a terrible driver, Cheri,” she said.