Healing Beau (The Brothers of Beauford Bend Book 6) (14 page)

And when would she have to tell them? She was tall. Maybe that meant she wouldn’t show as soon as Emory had. That would be good. Maybe she should go to a home for unwed mothers like it was 1956. Then she could come back with the baby and say she had adopted it. People would know and whisper, but they wouldn’t say anything to her face.

But wait. They would. Because it wasn’t 1956. But what did she care, anyway? She could support herself and this baby. Her customers wouldn’t care if she had fifteen babies all at once as long as she kept those cheese straws and that wine coming, as long as she let them have a ham sandwich instead of scrambled eggs, and remembered who liked their Bloody Mary made with Clamato Juice instead of Zing Zang mixer.

Or like they
thought
she remembered—like she didn’t have index cards on repeat clients. It was a trick Emory had taught her. That’s why they were queens of the B&B and events business worlds.

Pregnant queens—not only that, queens pregnant with Beauford offspring. Except it was different with Emory. She had planned her baby and had a husband who’d stood on a stage, held her hand, and told the world how happy he was that he was going to be a father.

Also, Emory had not insinuated to Jackson that she was on birth control and pretended to be experienced when she wasn’t. Beau was going to cut her head off and feed it to the dogs. He had it in him. She knew that. There were all those new puppies running around Beauford Bend. How long would it take them to eat her head?

Maybe she would never tell who the father was. Maybe she’d tell Beau the baby belonged to somebody else. She’d certainly acted like she slept around. He’d believe her. Maybe. She could have her baby. It would grow up with Emory’s baby, and they would be best friends. But what if she had a girl and Emory had a boy? What if they fell in love without knowing they were cousins? She couldn’t let that happen.

Christian banged her head on the steering wheel. Might as well bang it while she still had it. This was a whole new level of head/steering wheel despair. It had to stop. Who knew if head banging might hurt her baby?

Christian had always known her limitations—on the basketball court, with Beau, and in her business.

And she knew her limitations now. She couldn’t stand this another second without some help.

Christian picked up her phone and dialed. “Noel? Can you get away from the shop for a little while? I’m ready to talk. I’m in town. I can meet you at Mill Time.”

There was no chance of privacy at Miss Laura’s or The Café Down On The Corner, but by now, the lunch crowd would have cleared out of Beauford’s fanciest restaurant. Since they weren’t particularly friendly with any of the staff, they could talk without being overheard.

Besides, she was hungry.

• • •

Beau slid out of the booth and stood as soon as he caught sight of Mary Charles McAnnally making her way across the dining room of Mill Time. Long red hair, long legs, and big eyes. It had been years since he’d seen her, but she looked much the same.

“Beau.” She turned her cheek for him to kiss.

“You look good, Mary Charles.” He waited for her to sit before he settled back into his seat across from her.

“Thank you. So do you. But you always did.”

The waiter appeared with the beer he’d ordered for himself and a glass of Chardonnay for Mary Charles.

“I hope that’s okay. I thought you’d probably grown out of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill.”

She took a sip of her wine and shook her head. “Can you believe we used to drink that stuff?”

“Would you like some lunch?”

Mary Charles shook her head. “No, thank you. But you go ahead.”

“I’m good. I had breakfast with my cousin Missy before I left Merritt this morning. She made a lot. I ate a lot.”

“I remember Missy. So that’s what you were doing in Merritt? Visiting her?”

“Yes.” Technically not a lie. He had seen plenty of Missy, Harris, and their kids while he was down there. He wasn’t ready to talk about his new endeavor to just anybody. And regardless of how good she looked or how much Strawberry Hill they’d shared in the back seat of his car, Mary Charles
was
just anybody.

“Beau.” Mary Charles set her glass on the table and folded her hands. “I’m sure you think that because I’m newly divorced and you’re just back in town that I called you because I’m in the market for a new husband or a fling to help me forget about the old one.”

He hadn’t expected that. “I don’t know that I that would have put it quite that way but …” But what? How was he supposed to answer that? “But yeah. I guess that’s the upshot of what I would have thought if had thought about it that much.”

She put up a hand and laughed a sad little laugh. “I can see where you would, but I’m a little too fresh from divorce court for that. I thought I did everything right in my marriage, but here I am anyway. I don’t really want to go into it, but it wasn’t my choice, and it wasn’t just an ‘agree to disagree.’ It was nasty, it was humiliating, and it was public. At first, I thought it was my fault. I guess that’s natural, at least for a woman. But it wasn’t. Even so, he grew up in Savannah and I did not. He got the friends—or I guess he’s the one who had them all along.”

“I’m really sorry, Mary Charles.” This was pretty uncomfortable. He wasn’t a cards-on-the-table kind of guy, nor was he used to people who were. “Do you want me to go to Savannah and beat him up? I will. I’ll break a Strawberry Hill bottle over his head for old times’ sake.”

She looked surprised for a second, and then she began to laugh a real, honest, amused laugh. She wiped her eyes with her napkin.

“Oh, Beau. Thank you for that. This is the first time I’ve laughed in five months.”

“I do what I can. Some days.” But none of this explained why she’d called him.

“Here’s the thing. Back when I was at the bargaining phase of my grief, I made a list of all the terrible things I’ve done to people over the years, thinking if I recognized what I’d done, I could get my life and my marriage back. When I moved on to the acceptance part, I still had the list. You won’t believe some of the things on it. Stole the newspaper out of the neighbor’s yard when I was eight, because my picture was in it and I wanted an extra copy. Let Ginny Knight think I was doing her a favor by letting her go ahead of me in line when we were renting school lockers, when I was really angling to get a top one.”

What was he? A priest who was supposed to grant absolution?

“Even if you believe in karma or a vengeful God, I don’t think those things would have brought on what happened to you.” He had to admit he was pretty curious about what that had been. Prostitutes, porn, group sex with the Junior League? But he wasn’t asking, no, sir. He didn’t have that kind of time.

“I agree.” She took a sip of her wine. “But there were a few things I feel like I need to make right, if it’s even possible to do that. Probably it isn’t. But I can apologize for what I did to you our senior year.”

Now he was really confused. “To me? For what? We broke up, sure. Kids break up.” He didn’t really even remember who’d done the breaking up, but considering the way she was carrying it on, it must have been her.

“We didn’t just break up. I broke up with you because I wanted to date a Vandy freshman. Randy Cooper.”

“That was a long time ago. We were kids. Kids want to date a lot of different people. I sure as hell did.” It was coming back to him now. He had been upset, which had surprised him—though it had probably been more about his pride than anything else. He had been accustomed to being the one who left a relationship. Come to think of it, that had never changed.

“That’s not all. I thought I was going to be hot stuff showing up at the prom with a college boy, but he refused to go. He said he was past all that, and he didn’t understand why his spring fraternity formal couldn’t be enough for me. But it wasn’t. I wanted to go to the prom.”

Beau wanted to interrupt her and tell her it didn’t matter, but he sensed that she wanted to get it all out.

 “I knew there was a good chance I would be queen. I wanted the pictures to be good, and you were the best looking boy in Beauford.” She smiled a sweet, remembering kind of smile, without a trace of flirtation. “You still are. So I manipulated you into getting back with me so I could go to the prom with you. Then I broke up with you shortly afterward so I could go with Randy to that fraternity dance—which did not work out for me, because he wouldn’t take me back. And he shouldn’t have. You shouldn’t have either.”

Beau reached across the table and took her hand. “Mary Charles, it was a long time ago. We were kids. To tell the truth, I didn’t even remember all that.”

“Whether you remember it or not, whether I was selfish and immature or not, I still shouldn’t have done it. You always treated me well. And I am sorry.”

“Then I accept your apology.” Clearly she needed that.

She smiled. “You know, if the offer’s still good, I think I could eat something now.”

“Sure.” He turned to get the waiter’s attention— and found himself looking right into Christian’s eyes from where she stood across the room. He was shocked at how glad he was to see her. “Christian!” He let go of Mary Charles’s hand and stood. But as he took a step in her direction, Christian put up a hand as if to ward him off, turned, and flew out the door.

What in the hell? What had happened here? When he turned to look at Mary Charles, she had covered her face with her hands. Was the whole female population infected with some kind of high drama, emotional, zombie disease?

“What?” he demanded. “What in the ever loving hell?”

Mary Charles raised her face. “That’s another apology I owe, but one load of guilt I’m going to have to live with. It would be too humiliating for her, and I don’t deserve absolution.”

She had done something to Christian? Anger flared. That was another matter entirely. “What about?” he asked evenly.

“Beau, surely you’re not that obtuse. For basically the same thing. You were going to take her to the prom.”

That’s right. He remembered all that now. “It was no big deal. She didn’t even really want to go. She was glad when you and I got back together, because she wanted to go to the beach that weekend.”

“No she didn’t.” Mary Charles looked more ashamed than she had when she’d been confessing to him. “She was excited. Her mother had taken her to Atlanta to buy a dress. And she didn’t go to the beach. She only told you that to save face.”

That couldn’t be true. Christian wouldn’t have lied to him. Even if she had, he would have known it; she was his best friend.

“How do you know that?” There was no way she could have known that.

She shook her head. “You don’t understand anything about teenage girls. Even when they’re trying to play it cool like Christian did, the truth is there. And I was paying attention because I didn’t like that you were taking her, even when I still thought I could get Randy to go with me. See? I’m an awful person.”

He had no time for this and less patience. “No, Mary Charles, you are not. You were a spoiled brat who acted out and got over it. Now get over this.”

In truth, if what Mary Charles said was true, he was the awful person. But Christian had been so insistent that she didn’t care.

Hell. What now?

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, Noel Glazov was standing in front of him, and she did not look happy. She let her eyes drift to Mary Charles and looked even less happy. Zombie drama apocalypse, without a doubt.

“I was supposed to meet Christian here. Have you seen her?” Her words weighed about a ton each. If she could have physically hurled them at him, he’d be dead.

“Yes. She seemed to get upset, though I don’t know— She ran out.”

“Really? Really, Beau?”

Everyone talked about how kind and gentle Noel was, but evidently they had not seen this side of her.

No man, no woman, no terrorist across enemy lines had ever looked at him like this woman was looking at him. There was no doubt in Beau’s mind that if Nickolai Glazov were to walk in right now and see the expression on his wife’s face, he would commit murder first and ask questions later.

“I—” he began.

And that woman rolled her eyes at him, turned on her heel, and erupted out the door. Yeah, erupted. There was no other word for it.

“You’d better go,” Mary Charles said.

No shit. But where?

Numb. Frozen. Dead. Any of those things would have been preferable to how Christian was feeling. As it was, there was a weed eater with razor blades attached whizzing around in her gut.

Was there no end to the hell that was today? She had always been so good at playing it cool when Beau was with other women—and she should have been good, Grand Champion, Olympic Gold good because she’d had plenty of practice. But there was something about standing there, as Beau’s baby grew inside her, watching him hold hands with another woman. And not just any other woman. Oh, no. Her Royal Majesty Mary Charles, Queen of the Prom, no less. It was too much. She’d thought she was over that prom business. Maybe she had been. She’d brought it on herself. But hadn’t she brought everything on herself?

She entered the front door of Firefly Hall and stood in the middle of the foyer. She was in her own home, but there was no retreat—not to her office where that music box that Beau had given her sat on her desk, not to the main parlor where they had spent so much time sitting in front of the fire, and certainly not upstairs where they’d made love. No. Not made love. Had sex. Had sex and made a baby.

The lady’s salon—that’s where she’d go. It was a tiny jewel of a room tucked behind the music room that her mother had been partial to for reading, doing needlepoint, or entertaining a friend or two. Though the room was pretty, Christian had never liked it much. There were too many fragile, precious little things for a tall, awkward girl to break. Technically, it was open to guests, but nobody ever got that far with the main parlor, the music room, and the library in between.

The house was quiet. Though there would be a full house tomorrow, there were only three guests right now. Allie, one of the assistant innkeepers was around somewhere, but the cleaning staff had already left for the day.