Simple Gone South (Crimson Romance) (21 page)

After kickoff, if you wanted food, you got up and got it. If you wanted beer, there were two kegs on the back porch. At halftime, Missy would pick up the dirty dishes, freshen up the food, and replenish the baskets of snacks scattered around.

Last year, Brantley had shown up to the party late and unannounced. He hadn’t even gotten to town until almost time for kickoff. Lucy had fled, giving some lame excuse about having to go to New Orleans to look at a tea service. This year was so different. The thought of next year made her a little sad, but maybe she and Brantley could end things in a way that they could be at the same place without awkwardness.

Of course, he could have always done that.

Last night, when she had been so tired, he had been so sweet—and sweet scared her; it scared her to death. She’d kept nodding off on his shoulder and he had stroked her hair and dropped a kiss on her head from time to time. Sex, for real or almost, had not been an option.

The warm Indian summer weather continued to smile on them so Lucy dressed in knee length khaki shorts, a crisp white oxford cloth shirt, and her headband with ROLL TIDE stitched across the top. No matter what Missy said, Lucy thought—since she was not alum of the University or even a native of the state—that was enough of a declaration.

When she opened the door to Brantley, her jaw dropped mentally, if not physically. He was wearing houndstooth shorts, an Alabama t-shirt, and a Crimson Tide baseball cap.

“Those are
some
shorts,” she said.

“Like ’em?” He turned to give her a look from behind.

If there was a bottom in Alabama that ought to be sporting houndstooth, it was his.

“All you’ve got left to do is paint yourself crimson.” She stepped aside to let him in.

“I’ll save that for the BCS Bowl.”

“So you think they will be playing for the National Championship?”

He bent to give her a kiss but stopped.

“Of course I do. I know it. So does everybody else. Don’t you keep up, woman?”

“Lately, I do good to keep up with you.”

“That’s a priority I like.”

She turned to gather her purse and tray of brownies.

“Aren’t you going to get your sweatshirt?” Brantley asked.

“What sweatshirt?” she asked. “It’s warm out. I don’t need a sweatshirt.”

“Your game day sweatshirt.”

“You mean an Alabama sweatshirt? I don’t have one.”

“You are wearing
that?”
He gestured to her shorts and shirt. “You have no colors. She will kill you dead.”

Lucy bowed her head so he could see the headband. “She never has and this is what I always wear.”

“You can’t even see that. Your curls cover it up.”

“You’re going to have to be satisfied with me and so is Missy. It’s all I’ve got.”

“I can fix that. We’re going to Clayton’s. I’ll get you a t-shirt like mine and a sweatshirt for when it cools off later.” Clayton’s was the sporting goods store over near the country club.

He looked her up and down again. “Why don’t you change out of those topsiders into your Keds? That would be cute.”

“My Keds? Since when to you have an opinion about what I wear on my feet?”

“I’ve got an opinion. I’d like to see you in some really tall boots. Black. With studs.”

“I’ll go to Clayton’s with you, but I believe I’ll keep these shoes on.”

“Well, it won’t be the same, but come on.”

“And I am not wearing a cheerleader uniform.”

“I don’t even want you to. I have bad memories attached to some cheerleaders.”

“We have to be quick,” Lucy said. “I promised Missy I’d come early to help.”

His amber eyes sparkled at her. “Can you spare a moment for a guy to give his girl a kiss?”

Oh, yes, she could spare that. She turned her face up.

• • •

Lucy and Brantley were the first to arrive.

When Missy opened the door, she was wearing blue jeans and a number twelve Alabama football jersey with BRAGG lettered across the back. It had seen better days. It wasn’t usually in Missy’s nature to wear something that wasn’t entirely pristine, but since this shirt had actually seen those better days on Harris’s body on the field of Bryant-Denny Stadium, she made an exception. On Iron Bowl day, she also made an exception about serving only high quality food made from fresh ingredients. Harris had some weird superstition that demanded Chex Mix, pigs in a blanket, and cheese dip made from Velveeta and canned Rotel tomatoes. Missy might wrap Little Smokies in canned biscuit dough and she might serve them, but she was never going to be pleased about it. Of course, these things were just a postscript to the other fabulous food she would serve.

In spite of the retro processed food that she would have already made, Missy looked pretty happy today.

“Lucy! You’ve got a real game day shirt!”

“You can thank me.” Brantley stepped in and hugged Missy. “I have no hostess gift. My gift to you is Lucy Mead appropriately dressed.”

“You never have a hostess gift,” Missy said.

“I also got her a sweatshirt. She’ll put it on later.”

“Oh, good God,” Missy said. “Don’t tell me you’ve started in on her about that. Leave her alone about a damned sweatshirt and shorts.”

“What?” Lucy asked.

“Brantley likes the look of shorts and a sweatshirt on a woman. And Keds, with socks—close fitting white socks, to be exact, that come just over the anklebone. I’m surprised he’s not trying to get you to put on Keds.”

Like she’d been wearing that day in Savannah when she’d worried so much that she’d looked sloppy. Maybe he’d liked the look of her that day as much as she’d liked the look of him, even if their visit had ended on a sour note. Suddenly, she decided. She was going to turn that sour note to a sweet one and she was going to do it tonight.

Brantley continued to banter with Missy. “She would not put on Keds. I could not make her. And you’re not supposed to know I like that look, Missy. But since you do, I do not apologize. There’s just something about it.”

“If I’m not supposed to know it, you shouldn’t have gotten drunk that time and waxed eloquent about it all over the place.”

Lucy would not have expected the warm, poignant feelings that washed over her. So many times she’d been in this house, single and alone, with Missy so gloriously happy with her family. For a long time, Lanie and Tolly had been alone too, but then Lanie had married Luke, followed by Tolly reuniting with Nathan. And Lucy was happy for them, truly happy.

But she had stood up with three brides at three weddings and she had been left standing alone. And sometimes it was hard to go into a restaurant and sit at a table for eight, with an empty chair beside her. Even on the odd occasion when she had a date, that chair still felt empty. But with Brantley it was different. She didn’t feel alone.

Now, Beau was running into the room, Harris behind him. They were dressed in matching number twelve jerseys and Brantley was lifting a squealing Beau over his head.

“If y’all wake up Lulu she’s yours for the day,” Missy promised. “And believe me, if she doesn’t get her nap out, she’s mean. She will bite you.”

Luke, Lanie, and Arabelle were coming up the walk now with Emma—also wearing a number twelve jersey—running ahead. Luke carried John Luke and Arabelle and Lanie carried white boxes that would be candy from Lanie’s shop.

“Miss Lucy!” Emma landed at her feet. “I got a one, two, three shirt, the same as Beau!”

Lucy dropped to her heels. “You look very snazzy.”

“That’s a one, two shirt.” Harris ruffled Emma’s hair. “And don’t you forget to tell Uncle Nathan when he gets back from the game that it’s way better than an eight, five shirt.”

“My Aunt Belle is here! She brings presents. Baby Avery went home.” Emma jumped up and down. And she was off.

Lucy looked up at the hugs and laughter going on all around her. This was family. And she would do well to learn to feel complete here with or without an empty chair.

“I’m going to find the pigs in a blanket and the cheese dip,” Brantley said.

“Please do,” Missy answered. “Eat yourself sick; eat it all before anybody whose opinion matters to me gets here.”

Brantley smiled and blew Lucy a kiss. “Will you be okay?”

It was the thing a man raised in the south and a veteran of cotillion class would ask his date, but Lanie laughed and pretended to swat at him. “She’s been okay with us without you around for years.”

Yes. She must remember that, especially after what she intended to do tonight.

“Let’s get that food put out before the masses arrive,” Lucy said. Tolly wasn’t here to keep them on task, so for today, she would take it up.

• • •

According to Missy, barbecue could not be cooked correctly at home without digging a pit and procuring hickory wood. Since she had no desire to ruin her landscaping, she had bought masses of pork, wings, chicken, and ribs from the best place in town, Depot Barbecue. However, the baked beans, corn casserole, slaw, and two kinds of potato salad were all her doing. She’d even made the pickles and the sandwich buns.

“You can’t tell anyone, Arabelle,” Missy said as she arranged deviled eggs on egg plates.

“Can’t tell that you bought the meat?” Arabelle looked puzzled and sniffed the pork. “This is from Depot Barbecue. Everyone eats there. They’ll recognize it.”

“Oh, no,” Lanie said. “You don’t get it at all. She doesn’t want anyone to know she made the other food. She always lies and says she buys it. She doesn’t want anyone to know she can cook.”

Arabelle laughed a pretty laugh to go with her pretty face. She had dark hair and bright blue eyes like Luke and Emma. “I won’t tell. I don’t understand but I am good at keeping secrets.”

“You’d understand if you lived in a town that had as many bake sales as this one does. They would wear me down to nothing.”

“Missy, how many guests do you think you’ll have?” Lanie asked as she started to count out plates for the buffet.

“Oh, who knows? We should put out twice as many plates as we’ll have people because some will go back and get a clean plate. I’d say fifty plates, but Harris is always inviting random people without telling me, so make it sixty. We can pull out more if we need them.”

“I’m afraid Brantley might have done a little of that inviting this year,” Lucy said. “Did he tell you he invited Will Garrett?”

“No,” Missy said. “But that’s fine. What’s one more? And we like Will.”

“Only one more?” Arabelle said. “What about his wife?”

“Will doesn’t have a wife,” Lucy said. At least he’d never mentioned one and she was pretty sure he didn’t wear a ring. “Though, I could be wrong.”

“No,” Missy said with certainty. “Will’s not married. Never has been. I’d know it.”

“No fiancée?” Arabelle persisted, as she poured Missy’s homemade barbecue sauce into a serving bowl.

“No,” Missy said. “Never been engaged. Though come to think of it, it seems there was some rumor going around about that. But it wasn’t true. Why?”

“Nothing,” Arabelle said. “I guess I heard the same rumor. No matter. Missy, do you want this barbecue sauce from the Depot put out too?”

“No. I control the sauce in this house and they are going to eat mine.”

• • •

An hour before kickoff the guests arrived in droves, including a classmate of Brantley and Missy’s, Ila Jo Gentry, who was in Merritt from Indiana for the holiday. Her husband, Jerry, wore a Notre Dame jersey.

“Are you going to send him home?” Lucy asked Missy.

“No. I guess I need to make my rules a little clearer next year.”

Lucy did not point out that there was no way Missy would don anything herself that lauded a team other than her own alma mater’s.

There were the usual suspects in crimson: the Cochrans, the Bennets, the Eubanks—all couples, all with children—plus Millie Carmichael, Jessilyn Chambers, and Jill St. John’s fiancé, though Jill was wearing the orange and blue. Besides Jill, other members of the Auburn contingent consisted of Carla Ashley, Larry and Jackie Joseph, and veterinarian Christian Chandler’s entire family.

When Will Garrett arrived twenty minutes before kickoff, it was impossible to tell by his attire—pressed jeans and a green starched oxford cloth shirt, devoid of any sort of logo—which team he rooted for, or if he cared. No one called him on it, maybe because baby Lulu was awake and in full overdrive or because Will wasn’t the kind of man you called on anything.

Most of the men settled into the den where the huge plasma TV hung, while the women divided themselves between the sunroom and the living room.

“I’m surprised you don’t want to be where the big TV is, Missy,” Arabelle said as she settled into a chair in the sunroom. Missy had steered serious fans to the sunroom and talkers to the living room. The older children were on the screened-in porch with the two teenagers Missy had hired to watch them.

“Lord, no. It would take a Marine Corp Special Unit to get me in there. You can practically taste the testosterone pouring out of there.”

“And what does testosterone taste like?” Laura Cochran asked.

Like Brantley,
flashed through Lucy’s mind. And she hadn’t had a nearly good enough taste today.

But Missy answered without missing a beat, “Like pigs in a blanket.”

Lanie looked toward the TV. “Y’all watch for Tolly and Nathan.”

“Lanie.” Missy put Lulu in the nearby play yard with John Luke, who had pulled up and was dropping blocks over the side. “There are 101,821 people in that stadium. We are not going to see Tolly and Nathan—though we might see Kirby on the sidelines. His number is ten.”

“We
might
see Tolly and Nathan,” Lanie insisted as she patiently picked up the blocks and gave them back to her son. “If we watch.”

And just then ESPN sideline reporter Audrey Evans appeared on the screen and said, “I’ve got former Crimson Tide All-American Nathan Scott with me.” And Nathan’s face appeared on the screen.

Pandemonium broke out throughout the house, even from the Auburn fans.

He was one of their own.

• • •

It was an afternoon of food, fun, and, of course, football.

It was also an afternoon of Brantley, with him appearing every so often to offer Lucy a drink or just say hello.