Southern Comforts Read online

  “Honestly,” Roxanne huffed with a brisk shake of her sleek blond bob, “you Yankees have absolutely no sense of style!”

  “I expect that’s why you’ve been invited on the program,” Chelsea replied blandly. “To bring culture to the philistines.”

  Only the sharpest ear would have caught Chelsea’s veiled sarcasm. The glint in her green eyes would have warned anyone who knew her. As it was, the other woman was so wrapped up in her pique, it flew right over her head.

  Roxanne’s gaze flicked over Chelsea like a medical researcher checking out the dog pound for potential experimental material.

  “A hopeless task,” she asserted between bonded teeth, then announced to no one in particular, “This is a shitty time of day.”

  When she pulled a cigarette from a crushed gold mesh pack and planted it between her lips, her assistant, a harried, pleasantly plump thirty-something woman leaped to light it. Chelsea noted the lack of a thank-you. Perhaps no one had bothered to inform the southern doyenne of domesticity that slavery had been abolished.

  “It fucks up my biorhythms.” The proclamation was exhaled on a cloud of noxious blue smoke that came puffing out of both nostrils like dragon fire. Chelsea said nothing. But she did wonder what the Steel Magnolia’s legion of fans would think of such earthy language escaping their guru’s glossy pink lips.

  Roxanne glared around the room, which had nearly emptied; the third guest of the hour—an economist from Harvard scheduled to discuss the potential impact of baby boomers reaching Social Security age—had already sought sanctuary in the rest room down the hall.

  “Where the hell is that boy with my tea?”

  A moment later, one of the interns returned to the greenroom. His name was Brian, Chelsea had learned. The son of a West Virginia coal miner and truck stop waitress, he was a scholarship student from Penn. He was, he’d told her earlier, thrilled to have won this highly coveted internship. But of course, he’d shared that little nugget of personal information before he’d met Roxanne Scarbrough.

  When she glimpsed the red-and-white tea bag tag hanging from the rim of the foam cup in Brian’s hand, Chelsea braced herself.

  “What the hell is this?” Roxanne demanded.

  “Roxanne,” her beleaguered assistant, Dorothy Landis, murmured, “it’s the tea you asked for.”

  “This is not tea.” Roxanne crushed her cigarette out into a GMA ashtray with enough force to break the slim cylinder in two. Blazing blue eyes hardened to sapphire as they raked the cup the young man was holding.

  “Tea is properly brewed in freshly drawn soft—but never chemically softened—water which has been heated in an enameled vessel. The leaves—preferably Imperial Darjeeling—should be dropped into the water just as it arrives at a brisk rolling boil, giving them a deep wheel-like movement, which opens them up for fullest infusion.”

  Her voice, as it slashed away at the intern, was as sharp and deadly as a whip. “After which time it is poured into a scalded, preheated pot to allow the essential oils to circulate through the liquid.”

  A very good four-carat diamond sparkled in the overhead fluorescent light as Roxanne reached out and plucked the white cup from the intern’s hand. “This is not tea,” she repeated. Turning her wrist, she deliberately poured the brown liquid onto his shoes.

  Chelsea watched the bright red spots appear on his narrow cheeks. Fortunately, before the young man could make a mistake that might cost him his job, another intern appeared in the doorway.

  “Ms. Lundon is ready for you now, Ms. Scarbrough,” she said.

  Roxanne immediately stood up. Chelsea watched, fascinated in spite of herself, at the woman’s metamorphosis. Her perfectly made-up face softened, the hardness left her eyes and her lips curved into her signature smile. She ran her hands over her spring suit—pink with black piping, from this season’s Chanel collection, Chelsea noted—smoothing nonexistent wrinkles.

  Then, without a backward glance, she swept from the room.

  “Christ,” Brian muttered. He grabbed a handful of paper napkins and began swiping at his previously white Nikes.

  Roxanne Scarbrough’s assistant’s brown eyes hardened. Brackets formed on either side of her thin lips.

  “Someday,” Dorothy Landis said in a coldly furious, tight voice, “someone’s going to do the world a big favor and kill that bitch.”

  Chelsea waited in the greenroom, watching the television as Roxanne taught Joan Lundon how to paint Easter eggs and decorate darling little baskets with organza ribbons and real grass, even though she had no interest in such overwhelming domesticity. She knew she should be concentrating on her own upcoming interview.

  When inviting Chelsea to appear on the program, the “Good Morning America” producer had explained that the focus of the five-minute segment would be Chelsea’s recent magazine article profiling Melanie Tyler, an Oscar nominee who was currently dating a U.S. senator. A very popular senator rumored to have a good chance at the White House in the next election.

  The idea that the outspoken, drop-dead gorgeous actress, known for her femme fatal roles, could actually end up First Lady had captured the interest of even those Americans who wouldn’t be caught dead watching “Entertainment Tonight,” or glancing at a tabloid newspaper.

  The cover article had escalated interest in the actress while drawing additional attention to Chelsea. After the magazine first appeared on newsstands two weeks ago, she’d received calls from three publishing houses expressing interest in a book about her experiences rubbing elbows with the rich and famous.

  Since graduating from college, Chelsea had been steadily making her way up the New York publishing ladder. Although she’d initially planned to follow in her father’s foot-steps as a serious journalist, she’d come to realize she possessed a talent for making people comfortable enough to open up and share life experiences and insights.

  She also possessed a natural curiosity that had been encouraged by her journalist father.

  “Curiosity steams the engine of progress, Chelsea,” he’d told her time and time again whenever he’d return home from a assignment in some far-off locale. “Why do you think Columbus set out for the New World?”

  “Curiosity,” she had answered from her favorite perch on his jean-clad knee.

  “That’s right.” His voice, deep and rich and booming, was a welcome change from the usual hushed quiet of their Park Avenue apartment. “And what made doctors think common old mold could lead to the miracle of penicillin?”

  “Curiosity!” It had been, hands down, her favorite game. “And what made man set out to discover that the moon wasn’t really made of green cheese?” she’d ask him in return.

  “Curiosity!” they’d both shout, then laugh at the shared joke.

  At the time, she’d had no way of knowing that the beloved game would lead her to a career writing celebrity profiles for Vanity Fair.

  With a self-honesty that had always served her well, Chelsea realized her illustrious family name opened more than a few doors. But once they were opened, she had to work even harder to prove herself to those skeptics who believed her to be little more than just another connected society girl, playing at being a writer in between planning charity balls.

  Having worked hard to get where she was, Chelsea should have been pleased with how far she’d come. After all, how many people had an opportunity to sit in the copilot’s seat while John Travolta flew his jet one day to Aspen, then discuss love and life with Brad Pitt over pizza at Spago the next? Although she knew writers who’d kill to be in her position, lately she’d been feeling as if she were in a rut. Or more accurately, a treadmill.

  Deciding to straighten out her life later, when she had a moment to think, Chelsea focused her attention on the monitor. As she compared Roxanne’s bright spring suit to her own subdued outfit, she wished she’d stuck to her guns this morning when she’d come out of the bathroom and found Nelson laying out her clothes.

  “I thought your taupe line
n slacks and cream silk blouse would provide the perfect look,” he’d informed her with the easy confidence of a man accustomed to getting his way. “Casual enough for morning television, while being classically elegant at the same time.”

  “I was planning to wear my new suit.” She’d found it last week at Saks, and although it was ridiculously expensive, she’d fallen in love with it at first glance.

  “The peplum is too fussy for this time of the morning. Besides, the color clashes with your hair.”

  “Red gives me confidence.”

  “That may be. But this outfit will make you look confident.”

  Swallowing her frustration, Chelsea had taken the blouse he held out to her. Lord knows, as her mother was always telling her, when God had been passing out style, she’d been at the back of the line, reporting on the event.

  The fact that she could never live up to Deidre Lowell’s fashion-plate standard had never bothered Chelsea. Just as she usually didn’t mind allowing Nelson—whose intrinsic fashion sense rivaled her mother’s—to select her outfits for important occasions.

  She might look elegant, Chelsea thought now. The problem was, she didn’t feel elegant. What she felt was irritated. And drab. Dammit, she considered with a burst of frustration, she knew she should have worn the red.

  Raintree, Georgia

  There was nothing finer than sex first thing in the morning, Cash considered as he engaged in some slow, postcoital caresses with the lushly endowed blonde lying beside him.

  The bedroom was dark, lit only with the pale, silvery pink light of a new dawn. The sweet fragrance of Confederate jasmine wafted in through the open window, mingling with the woman’s perfume and the redolent scent of lovemaking.

  “Nice,” he murmured as he nibbled luxuriously at her throat.

  “Much, much better than nice.” Melanie Tyler linked her hands around his neck and treated Cash to a long, wet kiss. “If I’d only known southern men were so good in the sack, I’d have joined the Confederacy a long time ago.”

  He chuckled warmly. “It takes two.”

  Cash liked Melanie Tyler. A lot. And for more than great sex, although, he admitted readily, compatibility in bed was always a plus. He’d met her at the Magnolia House, an inn where her movie company was staying while filming a sprawling Civil War epic. Within fifteen minutes of meeting the actress in the lobby bar, they’d been tangling the sheets in her room. The affair had been going on for a month now and both accepted that her time in Georgia was at an end.

  Melanie treated sex as a man did. She enjoyed it for what it was, took what she wanted, gave what she could, and when it came time to move on, she did. With no regrets.

  “Oh, hell.” She leaped from the bed as if burned.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I almost forgot. Marty called yesterday.” Marty, Cash knew, was her agent. “That writer who interviewed me for Vanity Fair is going to be on “Good Morning America” today.”

  Cash leaned back against the headboard and enjoyed the view of Melanie fiddling with the television dial. The remote had disappeared early last night amidst the sheets. As much as he genuinely liked her, Cash could not imagine this free-spirited sex goddess living in the White House.

  “You’re not really going to marry that stuffed-shirt senator, are you?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to guess, sweetheart.” She returned to the bed and snuggled up beside him as they waited through the segment where Roxanne Scarbrough was demonstrating how to prepare a proper southern Easter brunch.

  The life-style demonstration ended. A commercial for a new, improved detergent was followed by another pushing the wonders of quilted toilet paper.

  “How would you like to sleep in the Lincoln bedroom?” Melanie asked.

  “I suppose it depends. Would I be sleeping there alone?”

  She laughed. “Don’t be silly.”

  Across the room, on the nineteen-inch television screen hidden away in an antique armoire, the commercials faded away.

  When the camera focused in on a close-up of Charlie Gibson introducing the magazine writer, Cash knew he’d lost Melanie. Her sudden alertness reminded him of the way Blue, his old German shorthaired pointer, had reacted upon sniffing out a covey of quail. Looping his arm around her smooth, nude shoulders, he settled down to watch the interview.

  From what Melanie had told him about the importance of this interview, Cash realized he’d formed a mental image of some hardened, thin-lipped, cynical Yankee journalist who’d seen it all and didn’t like much of what she’d seen.

  As the camera shifted to the young woman seated across from Charlie, Cash experienced a white-hot jolt of recognition.

  Although she was as beautiful as ever, Cash thought Chelsea looked tired. And if she’d chosen those obviously expensive sedate clothes to appear older and more sophisticated, she’d failed. Because the subdued colors only called attention to the gleaming copper penny hue of her long straight hair.

  Her bright eyes—the color of new money—were wide and warm; her mouth smiled easily. The way she answered Charlie’s questions with brief, but thoughtful answers, revealed she’d matured. She’d also revealed a vulnerable, intelligent side of Melanie that even Cash, who prided himself on being able to read women, hadn’t discovered.

  “I didn’t know you had a degree in economics from Johns Hopkins.”

  “When I first started out in Hollywood, being smart wasn’t sexy.” Melanie didn’t take her eyes from the screen. “Hush. I want to hear what she’s saying.”

  So did he. Chelsea Cassidy’s voice was still as smooth as heated honey. He could have listened to it all morning.

  All too soon, the interview was over. When Cash found himself wishing they’d thought to tape it, so he could listen to those dulcet tones again, he decided that lack of sleep and too much champagne at last night’s wrap party for Melanie’s film must have killed off a few too many brain cells.

  “Well, what did you think?”

  “She was pretty good.”

  She hadn’t known him long, but her next words proved that she’d come to know him well. “Christ, Cash, trust your hormones to leap to attention at the sight of a beautiful woman. I was talking about what Chelsea Cassidy had to say. About me.”

  It was not Cash’s style to ignore one woman for another. Since he’d first lost his virginity in an upstairs bedroom of Fancy Porter’s whorehouse, Cash had prided himself on being an attentive, thoughtful lover. Fancy had taught him a lot of things that long hot summer of his fifteenth year. But the two most valuable lessons had been that a slow hand was worth a dozen quick fucks and treating a woman as if she were the only female in the world invariably paid off big time.

  Concentrating on the woman who’d warmed his bed so well and so often these past weeks, Cash pulled Melanie closer. “You’re a lot better than damn good, sugar.”

  “Well, I know that.” She pouted prettily and brushed some dark hair back from his forehead. “And, by the way, I think Chelsea is married. Or, if not married, seriously involved. While we were doing the interview, she got a call from some guy she was living with. Nelson somebody.”

  So she’d actually gone and done it, Cash thought with a burst of cold, angry derision. She’d actually married that arrogant, pompous jerk.

  “Not that I imagine a little detail like marriage vows would much matter to you,” Melanie said.

  “I never sleep with married women.”

  It was true. These days, anyway. Well, almost true, Cash amended as Lilabeth Yarborough came to mind. But hell, Lilabeth’s husband had left the former high school cheerleader and their three kids to seek his fortune on the NASCAR racing circuit, and although they’d never actually gotten around to signing the papers to make the divorce legal, Billy Yarborough hadn’t been back to Raintree for two and a half years.

  “Besides, why would I want her?” He nibbled seductively at Melanie’s earlobe. “When I have you?”

  “Damn. I d
on’t know what’s wrong with my mind today.” She was out of bed again like a rocket, scooping up last night’s discarded clothes which made a path from the doorway to the bed. “I’m sorry, Cash. But I’m booked on the ten-thirty flight back to L.A.”

  Cash drove her the thirty miles into Savannah. After watching her disappear down the jetway he stopped at a newsstand in the terminal and bought a copy of Vanity Fair.

  Over the intervening years, he’d managed to convince himself that those crazy six months with Chelsea had been nothing more than a particularly virulent attack of lust. He’d gotten over it. And her. He survived the uptown Yankee girl in the same way he might have survived some rare fever that having run its course, never returned.

  As he sat in his Ferrari in the terminal parking lot, flipping through the glossy magazine to the article, Cash assured himself that he was only moderately interested in seeing if Chelsea had turned into as good a writer as she was a talker.

  He hadn’t bought the magazine because he was interested in her personally. Because he wasn’t.

  Not even a little bit.

  The hell he wasn’t.

  Casa Grande, Arizona

  In a Motel 6 off Interstate 10, George Waggoner lay in bed, drinking from a can of Budweiser in an attempt to take the edge off the blinding hangover he was suffering.

  Since the cut-rate motel didn’t feature dirty cable movies, he’d been forced to settle for network fare. As he made his way through the six-pack, he was only vaguely aware of the early morning newscast. He’d been in this motel room for most of the six weeks since his release from the prison.

  The money he’d managed to stash away during seven years in the pen was almost gone, eaten up by rent, cigarettes, booze and the occasional hooker. It was time to come up with a new plan.

  Which was difficult to do when his eyes felt as if they were bleeding and some shitass maniac was breaking rocks inside his head.

  And then he saw her.

  George blinked and rubbed his hand over his aching eyes, at first thinking she was some sort of hallucination left over from last night’s binge. Like those bats in The Lost Weekend he’d watched on late-night television.