Simple Gone South (Crimson Romance) (22 page)

During halftime, he wandered into the kitchen, where Lucy was loading the dishwasher, to try to convince her to put on that sweatshirt.

“It’s eighty degrees in here,” she told him. “Missy just cut down the air.”

“All the more reason for you to need a sweatshirt.”

“I’m good,” she’d said. “Go back to the man cave.”

He gave her shoulder a little squeeze before he left, and Ila Jo Gentry laughed.

“I’m glad I was around to witness that,” she said. “It was worth coming from Indiana to see.”

“What?” Lucy asked.

“Brantley Kincaid besotted.” If only that were true.

She looked across the way and noticed Arabelle standing by the fireplace in what appeared to be an intense conversation with Will Garrett. She idly wondered what that was about, but she was soon distracted by Brantley’s reappearance.

He carried two straight bourbons. “Here, baby. I thought you might want a fresh drink before the second half.” He gave her a brief kiss, so brief but so important because, even here among her friends, it was a ticket to fitting in, to belonging.

And she vowed that, though it wouldn’t last forever, she was going to make this last as long as she could.

“Can you believe that game?” Brantley asked in an indignant voice as he held the door and helped her into his SUV. “I thought we were actually going to lose there for a while!”

Why he was so astounded, Lucy didn’t know. Alabama might have been the clear favorite this year, but where this rivalry was concerned, all bets were off—no matter who had the better team. For most Alabamians, this was the most important game of the season, far outweighing any bowl game or national championship. Losing this game got coaches fired; winning it guaranteed multimillion-dollar contracts.

But he ranted as he drove and she took pleasure in it—such pleasure that she barely noticed where he was going until he pulled into the garage between Miss Caroline’s house and the carriage house.

“I thought you might want to see the kitchen cabinets,” Brantley explained.

Yeah. That’s it. That’s exactly what she wanted to see.

She made a show of looking at them, though they were precisely what she expected. She had designed them and there was never any question of Will’s work. She opened each satiny maple door, and pretended to admire the precision.

Brantley came to stand in front of her and shifted his weight to one leg.

“So. I talked to Will today. He wants to take me to this architectural salvage place he knows in Georgia. I thought I knew them all, but he says this one is small but select. Great stuff. Might have some things we can use. He’s available Wednesday and we’d be gone overnight. We’re going in his truck so we can haul back anything we buy. It’s one of those big luxury jobs with plenty of room for you. I want you to go.” He leaned in toward her.

She shook her head. “I can’t, Brantley. Much as I would like to. I have a few clients that I have got to finish up with if I am going to give this project my full attention. The first of the year will be here before we turn around.”

He frowned, like he was trying to decide if she was being coy or if she really couldn’t spare the time.

And suddenly, the thought of being away from him for a night—for two days—left her feeling bereft.

Bereft
—a word as old-fashioned as the crystal sconces and ornate woodwork that she loved, as old-fashioned as the feeling coursing through her.

She grabbed handfuls of his t-shirt and pulled him to her. He tasted like bourbon, like he had that night in Savannah. But tonight, she tasted like bourbon too, and not that silly affected lime and club soda that she had fancied so sophisticated. She was a woman with some experience, a realistic view, and a made up mind.

That heavy spring Savannah air was with them, right here in Merritt, Alabama, on an Indian summer November night.

And they both knew it. Brantley pulled away, cocked his head to the side, and gave her a questioning look. But, for once, he didn’t say a word. The air around them was doing their talking.

She barely hesitated. Caroline Brantley wasn’t the kind of woman to arrive unannounced and uninvited on her grown grandson’s doorstep, much less his bedroom, no matter who actually owned the property.

Still, one couldn’t be too careful. “Lock the door,” she said. And without a backward glance, she climbed the stairs.

By the time she stood beside that decadent chocolate, caramel, and champagne bed, Brantley had caught up with her. His arms went around her from behind and he lifted her breasts, kissed
that spot
on her neck, and rolled his erection against her bottom—all in the same moment.

Her knees gave away.

He caught her and his laughter was low and sweet against her neck. “I’ve got you,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

He turned her around, lifted her to the bed, and proceeded to undress her, kissing as he went.

“I’ve got to ask you, Lucy Mead,” he said against her shoulder. “Is this it? Just in case I’ve got it wrong. ’Cause if this is another tease and tickle session, I can go with that. But I need to break it to some of my body parts.”

She laughed. He always made her laugh. That was almost as good as his mouth on her breast. Wait. Well, maybe not.

“No bad news for your body parts,” she said.

By now she was naked. “Thank God!” He pulled her to him, threw back the covers, and turned her face down in a cloud of wonder and began to kiss his way up her spine, all the while letting his fingers dance across her thighs, bottom, and over her ribs.

The bed was even better than she had imagined. The soft feathers beneath her, the sheets that felt like cool whipped cream, and the silk pillows made for a sublime tactile experience only surpassed by Brantley’s hard bronze body and warm skin against her.

“I was dangerously close to playing the blue balls card with you.” He rolled his throbbing penis against her buttocks and she shifted until she felt the pulsing between her thighs.

“I read somewhere once that was a lie,” she gasped.

“Not a lie.” He cut his own words off with his mouth against her neck and his tongue just so. She tightened her thighs around him to feel him better, to let him feel her better. “Maybe a lie,” he said heavily. “But who cares?”

With that he rolled to his back, pulled her on top of him, and urged her thighs apart until she was straddling him.

“How’s this?” He parted her and notched her against him in the most intimate way possible. “Slide against me. Yes.” He closed his eyes. “Harder. Now, kiss me.” And dear God, he opened his mouth and touched his tongue to his top lip. He did that for her and it made her stomach turn over.

When she shifted her body to bring her mouth to his, an unexpected jolt of pleasure made her cry out and buck hard against him.

He turned her on her back. “Lucy. I know what store is set by foreplay and there’ll be more of that next time. But, for now, it’s over.” He reached into the bedside table and pulled out a foil packet.

She couldn’t have agreed more. “And high time,” she said. “We’ve had days and days of foreplay.”

And finally, she opened up to him and he entered her, making them one. She thought, after such a long wait, it would be over quickly. But no. He took her to the edge, and pulled back again and again. He whispered that she was beautiful and that she felt wonderful. He moved in circles clockwise and then counterclockwise, until she cried out with pleasure and frustration.

Until, finally, he drove deep into her and urged her to rock against him.

“I want to feel you come, Lucy.”

And she did. She threw her pelvis forward so she could be sure he felt those glorious spasms.

And she felt his. Then they dozed in each other’s arms for a half hour and woke up and did it all over again.

• • •

It was sometime around midnight, after he had brought them a meal of the only thing he had in the house—peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—and they had had yet another round, that Lucy sat on the side of the bed and reached for her clothes.

“You’ve got to take me home,” she said.

“I do,” he agreed and reached for her. “In the morning.”

Oh, no. That was not happening. It was one thing to lie naked in Caroline Brantley’s grandson’s arms with her sleeping serenely in her house fifty yards away. It was quite another to blatantly priss out the door in front of Miss Caroline, in broad daylight, wearing yesterday’s clothes.

He was way ahead of her. “Stay, Lucy. Stay with me. I know what you’re thinking, but I promise that we will not leave this house until I am more than sure that Big Mama is right and tight in her pew at Christ Episcopal. No one will see us go to the garage. Inasmuch as I am a grown man and make no apologies, I remember something my Papa used tell me.” His expression shifted to bittersweet. “He’d say, ‘Boy, see to it that you don’t present your personal business to the world in a way that will make some busybody report it in to your mama or your big mama. They may or may not care what you’ve been doing. They may or may not think it’s any of their business. But you can be mighty sure they will care a great deal if you are not circumspect and somebody feels the need to tell them about it.’” Then he looked at her imploringly, smiled, and held out his hand. “Stay.”

She hesitated. “I would not be a party to embarrassing Miss Caroline.”

“Nor would I.” He lifted the sheet and fluffed her pillow.

Temping. So temping to lie sweetly and serenely in his arms all night and wake up in the misty autumn light feeling rested and ready to be loved. Again.

But that wasn’t how the night went—at all.

To begin with, he slept right in the middle of the bed and snored, off and on. Though not a loud log sawing snore, it was audibly wheezy and right in the vicinity of her ear. When he wasn’t snoring, he was drooling—on her.

As far as the sleeping in his arms, that happened, and though she wouldn’t deny the sweetness, there was nothing serene about it. He clung to her like a four-year-old, latched onto his mother’s leg on the first day of preschool, taking her with him every time he turned over—which was often.

He talked in his sleep, muttering mostly about football and pumpkin pie. While he talked, he kicked, mostly the covers but sometimes her. He got up twice, presumably to use the bathroom, and both times when he came back to bed he said, “Lucy? Lucy? I didn’t wake you up, did I? Are you warm enough? Do you need anything?” and then promptly—before she had time to answer—fell asleep and proceeded to drool on her chest.

More than once she had to fight for the barest scrap of blanket, either because he’d kicked the covers off or dragged them to his side.

And that sweet, misty awakening had been anything but. During the night, rain and wind moved in, chasing away the magical warm autumn and bringing winter.

It was the best night of her life.

Brantley rolled over and pulled Lucy to him. Her bed did not have the sink effect his did, but it was a fine enough bed on its own and mighty fine with her in it. And what they had just done had been beyond fine of any degree.

“I submit to you, Lucy Mead,” he said, “that the people over at Lou Anne’s only think Tuesday’s lunch special is chicken pot pie. No. The ultimate lunch special is Lucy Mead.”

She laughed and ran her hand up his side, and his heart and stomach turned over, circled around each other, and went back to their original positions. Mercy, this woman put everything she had into making love. And since Saturday night, he’d been the recipient of that effort many times in many places: his bed, her bed, couches, showers, a kitchen counter, and—once—in the elevator of the Brantley Building.

“So,” Lucy said with the tail end of laughter still mixed in, “do you want to set up a food cart and sell me on the street for $7.95? Iced tea and cornbread included.”

That should have been funny, but it was not. He didn’t like that picture worth a damn. In fact, it made him a little mad to even think of anyone else touching her.

He laughed anyway. “You are worth selling. I’ll give you that, but I do not believe I am willing to participate in that. Now.” He ran his finger along her jaw bone. “If we could record that laugh and sell it—well. With only a small portion of the profits, we could feed every third world country, buy a sports team, and rid the world of smallpox.”
Educate our children in the finest institutions in the country.
He didn’t add that part.

“The world
is
rid of smallpox.” She got out of bed and began to gather her clothes.

Damn. He’d known this was coming. She had to go do something about some curtains for somebody. She hadn’t been kidding about why she couldn’t go to Georgia with him and Will tomorrow. She was frantically trying to finish her projects by the first of the year. Then she’d be his, all his. They’d work on the Brantley Building all day and make love all night. She would be with him 24/7 and he would be safe from thinking about bad things.

Sunday, Lucy had asked Big Mama if she had any old photographs of the interior of the Brantley Building and Big Mama had produced a big box of pictures that was a jumble of everything that had ever happened to them. Big Mama had laughed and explained how she was “no good at keeping picture albums and Alden’s mother hadn’t been any better.” Lucy had opened the box, ooing and ahing like it was a chest of jewels. They never guessed that the sweating and accelerated heart rate had set in or that he had calmed immediately when he laid his hand on Lucy’s shoulder.

Too bad she hadn’t been there last night when he’d been at his old house and Charles had sent him to the bedroom to get batteries for the TV remote. He’d opened the wrong dresser drawer and found his mother’s jewelry.

And too bad she wasn’t going to Georgia with him and Will—though he didn’t so much need her for his sanity on that trip, as for the pleasure of her company. He would be fine away from Merritt. But if Will—who never really seemed to think anything was quite up to par—said this was a great place, Lucy would love it.

He rose up on his elbow for a better look at her bottom as she bent over to retrieve her shoes. “What about tonight? Please tell me you don’t have to work late. I’ve got a hankering for some catfish from that place out by the lake.”