Low Country Liar (17 page)

Lisa wasn't really interested in hearing Mildred's psychological methods of keeping house. "Slade is here and
—"

"Yes, I know. I answered the door when he rang the bell. As if I haven't got anything better to do than run up and down stairs seeing who is at the door," she grumbled.
 

"Yes, well, I came to tell you that he's asked me to spend the day with him." Not even the housekeeper's grouchiness could diminish the happiness Lisa felt at the prospect of spending an entire day with Slade. "I'll be back in time for dinner tonight."

"And I've got a casserole in the oven for lunch," Mildred grumped and opened another drawer. In alarm, she stepped away from it with surprising swiftness. "What is that thing in there?" she demanded. "It looks like some furry animal."

Lisa realized which drawer Mildred had opened and went white. "It isn't an animal," she started to explain but Mildred was already reaching a tentative hand into the drawer to touch it.

"It's hair!" she exclaimed in a mixture of bewilderment and irritation.

"It's a wig,
"
Lisa identified it.

"A wig?" The housekeeper took it out of the drawer to examine it more closely. "You didn't have a wig when I unpacked your things. What would you want with a wig? And a red one, at that?"

The woman's attitude made Lisa feel as guilty as if she'd stolen it. "I…I bought it to play a joke on somebody." It was difficult to look the housekeeper in the eye and lie. "And I guess I always wondered what I'd look like in red hair."

"It's a waste of money if you ask me." Mildred sniffed in disapproval as she stuffed the wig back in the drawer.

Lisa inched toward the door. She didn't want to think about Ann Eldridge or anything about the reason she had come to Charleston, not today.

"You will tell Mitzi where I've gone?" she reminded the housekeeper that she was leaving.

"I'll tell her." The woman reached for the bottle of furniture polish, but it was empty. "Now I've got to make another trip downstairs. This just isn't my day," she complained aloud.

"Slade is waiting for me. I have to go." Lisa turned to leave the room, and Mildred was right behind her.

At the bottom of the stairs, Mildred spoke up. "I still don't understand why you'd want to buy a red wig when you have such beautiful hair."

"I told you I just did it for the fun of it," Lisa retorted impatiently, anxious to have the subject dropped before it infringed on her happiness.

"It's nothing to me how you spend your money," Mildred shrugged her slouching shoulders and turned down the hallway to the kitchen.

At that moment Slade rounded the corner, his dark gaze lighting on Lisa. "Your five minutes are up. Are you coming?"

"Yes." She almost dashed past Mildred to reach him and get him out of the house before the woman said any more about what she'd found in Lisa's drawer.

If Slade had appeared only a few minutes sooner, he would have discovered all about her deception. Lisa dreaded the moment when he would find out, not because she hadn't obtained the evidence she wanted, but because of what it would mean personally.

Outside, Slade helped her into the passenger side of the car. "I almost wish your answer had been no, you weren't coming," he said, pausing beside the car before he closed her door.

"Why?" She held her breath, her expression inscrutable.

"Because then I could have persuaded you to change your mind all over again," A half smile curved the hard, male line of his mouth.

Lisa released the breath in silent relief as he closed her door and walked around to the driver's side. A little voice inside her head said she was being a fool, but she ignored it.

Chapter Eight

THE REST OF THE MORNING and afternoon was spent driving. As Slade put it, if he had to keep his concentration on the road, he would be less tempted to take back his statement that they would just talk.

They traversed the whole Low Country area of South Carolina located around Charleston, stopping at noon to lunch in a crowded restaurant and again in mid afternoon for a cold drink.

Lisa didn't remember the last time she had told anyone so much about herself. But then they had both talked a great deal. The subjects had ranged from their childhood, their family and friends, to their work and hobbies, the kind of musing they liked and the books they read. Yet they both carefully avoided the subject of Mitzi Talmadge.

Myrtle Beach and the Golden Strand were far behind them now. Each rotation of the tires was taking them closer to Charleston. It was inevitable that the afternoon had to end. Staring at the Highway 17 sign at the side of the road, Lisa realized it and wished they were sixty miles from Charleston instead of six. Unconsciously she sighed in regret.

"What's wrong?" Perceptively Slade had caught the small sound and let his gaze be distracted briefly from the highway.

"Nothing," Lisa insisted, but she knew he would persist if she didn't divert his attention. "There must be a boom in baskets. I've never seen so many stands along the road selling them. Just look at them!"

"Surely you've seen them before?" he frowned.

"No, I haven't."

"But you had to come this way to get to Brookgreen Gardens." He was eyeing her curiously.

"Oh," she laughed serf-consciously, "I guess we were talking so much we never noticed any roadstands. You know how it is when a bunch of girls get together. Peg, Susan and I are no different."

Slade nodded and Lisa knew she had covered her fabrication story of having been to Brookgreen Gardens and how she had missed seeing these stands.

"You mustn't have heard about our Low Country coil baskets." He slowed the car and turned off the road, stopping in front of one of the stands. "Coil basketry is an African art brought over here by the slaves. The skill and designs have been passed down from one generation to another, sometimes with new designs by new artists being introduced along the way. Come on and we'll take a look. We can't have your education neglected," he mocked gently.

With Slade at her side, Lisa inspected the roadside display. The baskets came in all shapes and sizes, some intricate in their designs, some plain, some with lids and some open.

An aging black woman sat in a chair to one side of the stand, a sweater around her shoulders. Her nimble fingers were busy creating the coiled base of another basket, but not too busy that she was unaware of Slade and Lisa looking over her display.

"Generally women make the show baskets," Slade explained, "and men make the sturdier work baskets that were, and in some cases still are, used for agricultural purposes."

He pointed out a large, very shallow basket, called a "fanner basket," used to winnow rice, which was once the main crop of the large plantations around Charleston because of the high water table of the Low Country. Lisa picked up a smaller basket to study it more closely.

"The craftsmanship is superb," she murmured more to herself than to Slade. "How do they make them? What do they use?"

"The show baskets use sweet grass sewn together with the split leaf of the palmetto palm. The dark stripes in some of the baskets are decorations made by long needles of pine straw." He showed her the stitches of the palmetto leaf that seemed to radiate out in a straight line from the center of the coil basket. "The work baskets use bulrushes and split white oak or split palmetto butt for more strength."

"The materials are found locally?"

"Once they were in great abundance, but that isn't as true today. Large tracts of land where the sweet grass and palmetto palm grew have been developed into housing or resort areas. It's becoming more difficult for the basket artists to find natural materials for their work because of it." He glanced at the basket in her hand. "Would you like to have that?"

"Yes, it's beautiful, but—" Lisa started to point out that she had no money with her.

"My first gift to you." Slade didn't let her finish as he gently pried the basket from her fingers and walked over to the elderly artist to pay for it.

A few minutes later they were back on the road heading toward Charleston. Lisa held the small coil basket in her lap. Her first gift from Slade. He had said it as if it would be the first of many.

But whose money would pay for them? His or Mitzi's? She stared out of the window, wishing she hadn't thought of that. It spoiled her pleasure in the gift and, somehow, the day.

Neither of them spoke in the last half dozen miles to Mitzi's house. Lisa gazed absently out of the window, lost in her melancholy thoughts, and Slade had to concentrate on the traffic that got heavier as they entered the city limits of Charleston.

The scrolled wrought-iron gates were open to admit them to the driveway of Mitzi's house. Slade stopped the car in front of the portico and switched off the motor. Without a word, he climbed out of the car and walked around to Lisa's door.

"We're here," he announced unnecessarily as he opened it.

"Yes." Her reply was as instant as his comment.

They both seemed caught in the web of tension between them. Walking to the carved entrance doors of the house, Lisa attempted to brush it away.

"Did I bore you this afternoon?" She tried to be light and teasing, but there was an anxious note in the question.

"I don't know when I've been so—bored with a woman in my life," Slade mocked.

Lisa glanced away, a painful tightness in her throat. "Don't make jokes, Slade."

"Don't ask stupid questions, Lisa," he returned.

At the door she turned, her hand poised on the knob, straining for composure and wishing she didn't feel as if she was leaving him for good.

"Will you come in for a few minutes?"

"No." Slade leaned an arm against the jamb, effectively blocking her from entering the house immediately.

His dark head bent toward her and Lisa moved forward to meet him. The delicate violence in his kiss told her how great his restraint had been all day as he released the passion he had controlled. His desire wasn't satiated by the assault on her lips nor the feel of her pliant body arching to mold itself against the hard contours of his.

"I've been wanting to do that all day,"
he said, dragging his hard mouth from her lips to nuzzle the lobe of her ear. "That and more."

Her one free hand was exploring the rough texture of his face while the other still crazily held on to the basket. Eyes closed against the sweet torment of loving him and not knowing the culmination of that love, Lisa pressed herself closer to his length. She quivered with longing as he explored the base of her neck and the hollow of her throat, finding her pleasure points with seductive ease.

"Slade, I don't want you to ever let me go."
The trembling plea was issued in fear.

His mouth broke off the burning contact with her bare skin as he crushed her in the iron circle of his arms. She felt the inner shudder of longing he tried to conceal.

"Come over to my apartment tonight," he ordered in a voice that was husky and raw.

"I—can't," Lisa denied achingly.

"Yes, you can." His arms tightened punishingly around her. "After dinner, you can leave Mitzi alone with her coffee. Or come after she's gone to bed—I don't care."

"No!" She shook her head, wanting desperately to agree.

"Damnit, Lisa—" Slade began angrily as if tortured, his need for her surpassing his endurance.

"I'm not a prude, Slade," Lisa answered shakily. "But I can't do that to Mitzi. She may be open-minded, but she would never approve of that."

"You're right." He breathed in deeply, fighting for control as he loosened his hold. "The mother hen would feel overly responsible for her adopted chick. If you spent the night with me, we could never convince her that she hadn't failed you somehow. It would be foolish to hurt her that way."

"Yes," Lisa agreed with sudden bitterness, "we don't want her thinking badly of us."

Inwardly she damned her aunt's money and Slade's greed for it. He claimed to love her, but not even for love would he risk losing his chance for Mitzi's wealth. It cheapened her feeling for him somehow.

"Tomorrow—" Slade began, sliding his hands caressingly along her spine.

Lisa knew she didn't dare see him or spend time with him Sunday. "Tomorrow I'll have to devote to Mitzi," she insisted. "Since I've been here, I've hardly been with her at all. I can't go running off again or she'll think I've come here just to have free room and board on my vacation."

Slade seemed about to argue, then changed his mind. "Okay, I'll see you Monday. We'll have dinner and—"
a tight smile quirked his mouth as he lifted his head to look at her "—we'll see what else."

"Yes," Lisa agreed with a strained smile, a terrible depression settling over her. "I'd better be going in." She firmly disentangled herself from his embrace and turned to the door. He didn't try to stop her. "Good night, Slade," she murmured, aware that he hadn't moved.

"Lisa." It was a husky demand to come back to his arms.

At the feathery brush of his fingers against the spun silver strands of her hair, Lisa wrenched open the door and bolted inside. Closing the door, she leaned against it, the pain of loving him choking her throat. Seconds later she heard the slamming of the car door and the starting growl of the engine.