Leave it to Max (Lori's Classic Love Stories Volume 1) (9 page)

The prince had not taken the princess to his
castle and gifted her with her every heart’s desire. The knight had
not rescued the damsel in severe distress. The lover had never
loved her.

She rubbed at her eyes. One look at the man
and she was nineteen again. Her heart brimming with first love, her
mind full of him, her body on the edge of womanhood, waiting for
J.J. to make every dream come true.

And he had. For a little while.

Livy blocked out the lingering hum of
awareness. He was handsome. He was tall, dark and strong. He was
also the father of her child. She couldn’t be indifferent. But she
could be an adult. Adults controlled themselves. They did not leap
into bed with every person who aroused them.

She and Garrett had been kids. Then she’d had
to grow up. Garrett still hadn’t. To him, Max was a bright, shiny
new toy, and he wanted one. But what happened when he grew bored
with Max, as he’d grown bored with Livy?

Livy knew all too well, and she’d do whatever
she had to do to make certain her son wasn’t left devastated when
Garrett Stark blew town.

She glanced at her watch. Rosie had a meeting
at ghost walk headquarters and would not be home to meet Max after
school. If Livy hustled, she could be. She stepped up her pace, so
that when the whirlwind of legs and big feet came around the corner
and plowed into her stomach she had to windmill her arms to keep
from falling.

Max landed on his butt in someone’s front
yard.

“Oh, baby, I’m sorry.” She leaned down to
help just as Max threw his arm up for balance. He caught her in the
nose with his cast so hard Livy saw tiny floating black spots. At
least she had an excuse for her eyes to be bright with tears.

“Mom! What are you doin’ here?”

Holding her nose, waiting for the blood to
begin flowing, Livy could still give Max The Look. She’d had so
much practice. “What are
you
doing here, young man?”

He ignored the question he didn’t want to
answer, just as guilty parties always did. “I’m sorry I hit you in
the nose again. I never try to. Stuff like that just happens around
me.”

“I know.” She ruffled his hair. “But that
doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

He squinted, sheepish. “It’s not gushin’ this
time.”

“Well, that’s something.” She pinched the
bridge, pleased to find it still straight though sore, then she
gazed down at Max and sighed.

He didn’t need to answer her question. She
knew what Max was doing here. The same thing she’d been doing, and
she would put a stop to it immediately. Before Max decided Garrett
Stark would make a pretty good best friend.

Livy traced a finger along the bumpy surface
of his cast. “We have to talk.”

“Sure.” He grinned. “See how crowded my cast
is? I got all the doctors and nurses to sign, then at school
everyone wanted to. It was so cool. No one else has a cast.”

Livy shrugged off the guilt. She wasn’t the
worst mother in town just because her child wore the only cast in
school. Intellectually, she knew that. But in her heart? Not so
much.

Oblivious to Livy’s angst, Max started to
walk toward the big white house down the street. Livy caught at his
arm and got nothing but cast. Touching that thing was like stroking
a gravestone. “Let’s go home.”

His face scrunched. “But I wanna visit Mr.
Stark.”

“I figured that out, since you’re once again
where you’re not supposed to be when you’re not supposed to be
there. Didn’t I ground you?”

He hung his head and kicked a stone off the
sidewalk. “I wasn’t gonna be long.”

“Oh, that makes all the difference.”

In the way of children, he stuck a knife
right in her weak spot.

“Usually I’m home a while before you get
there on Wednesdays, anyway.” Then he twisted it a bit. “It’s not
like you’re there waiting for me.”

Guilt, guilt, guilt,
pulsed in Livy’s
head. She did her best, but she always seemed to come up a few
hours short. ‘‘If no one’s home, you’re supposed to go to Mrs.
Hammond’s. How many times have we discussed this?”

“But Jenny always wants to play house.” He
gave an exaggerated shudder. “And I have to be the husband. She’s
always saying she loves me, and when she does that I just want to
run away as fast as I can.”

Like father, like son.

She really had to stop thinking that way or
she’d let something slip. Taking hold of Max’s unfettered hand, she
tugged him in the direction of home. He held back, and Livy halted.
Max stared at her from eyes so like his father’s she had to force
herself not to look away.

“He’s a
writer,”
Max said, as if that
explained everything. “For a job.”

As fascinating as a dead bird is to most
boys, being a writer must be to Max. Ever since he’d been old
enough to hold a crayon, he’d drawn anything that came into his
head, and once he could write words, he wrote stories that were far
too advanced for a boy his age, causing both pride and concern to
war within Livy whenever she read one.

“He’s a writer, but he’s also a stranger.
What have I told you about strangers?”

“But—”

“
What
have I told you?”

He recited the creed. “They might look nice
and talk nice, but that’s their job. They could grab you and take
you and you’ll be gone forever-more.”

“And?”

“Then I’ll wish I’d listened to my mom.”

Livy hated scaring him, but truth was truth.
The world was screwed up. “I want you to stay away from Garrett
Stark.”

“But—”

“No buts. That’s final.” She took his hand,
expecting the grudging acquiescence she always got when she put her
foot down.

Instead, Max yanked away and backed out of
Livy’s reach. “He’s
not
a stranger. If he was gonna take me
away, he’d have done it when I snuck in his house.”

“You what?” Livy shouted.

A soft gasp made her look up, to find the two
little old ladies Garrett had frightened earlier strolling toward
them. Max scuttled behind her as Livy stifled a groan.

The Kendall twins—Miss Violet and Miss Viola—
had been her granny’s best friends. Savannah pure-breds and
southern gentlewomen, they often tried to get Livy to cease her
unladylike lawyering and settle down.

“Olivia Frasier, your grandmama would be
horrified to hear you shouting like a fishwife in public.”

Miss Violet’s genteel voice matched her peach
afternoon dress as well as her winter-white shoes matched her hat
and her gloves. The summer-white accouterments had been neatly
packed away after the Georgia-Florida football game, no doubt; just
as any lady in southern Georgia knew it was inappropriate to wear
panty hose until that age-old rivalry had been played out for the
season.

“Or shouting anywhere at all, for that
matter,” Miss Viola continued.

Her dress was autumn orange, the accents a
perfect taupe. The sisters were identical in face, body and voice.
The only way to tell them apart was by the shade of their hair.
Miss Violet’s was black streaked with gray, while Miss Viola’s was
gray streaked with black.

“I’m sorry,” Livy said. “But there are times
when shouting is needed.”

“Oh, no, dear, a lady knows how to make folks
listen by the tone and not the volume of her voice. It’s the
courtroom that’s ruining you. Our father, the judge, always
shouted.”

Their father, the judge, had been as deaf as
a sixty-year-old rock star. The courtroom had nothing to do with
it.

Violet raised her perfectly powdered,
white-as-a-daisy-petal, never-been-in-the-sunshine nose. “We just
refused to listen when he did. Right, Sister?”

“Hmm?” Viola frowned in the direction of
Garrett’s house.

Livy glanced that way, too, and discovered he
watched them from the porch. She cursed beneath her breath.

“Olivia! Such language.”

The sisters might be old, but
they
had
ears like Irish setters.

Max snickered. He’d come out of hiding and
now stood at Livy’s side. Max loved it when the sisters took her to
task, because that meant they weren’t picking on him. Two elderly
ladies who’d never been married had no idea what to do with a
rambunctious little boy, except tell him to sit still—which for Max
was a behavior straight from the realm of impossibility.

Violet glanced at Max and he sobered
instantly. She patted him on the head and went back to ignoring
him. Max nearly crumpled in relief.

“There’s something about that man...” Viola
murmured, still staring at Garrett.

“Really?” Violet removed her Coke-bottle
glasses, which she never wore unless she absolutely had to, from
her winter-white purse, and peered down the street. “He needs a
haircut.”

“No...”

“He most certainly does, Sister. A disgrace.
He looks like one of those guitar players on MTV.”

Livy and Max glanced at each other.
MTV?

“I’ve seen him before.”

Livy almost cursed again but managed to
contain herself. Though her granny had been senile at the end and
unable to remember J.J. from one day to the next, the sisters
remembered the name of their first-grade teacher—and pretty much
everything that had ever happened in their considerable lifetimes.
Livy didn’t think they’d ever seen her and J.J. together, but she
couldn’t be sure.

“He’s a horror writer,” Max put in
helpfully.

The sisters eyed him as if he were a bug, and
Max began to fidget. “A what?”

“He writes books about vampires. But don’t
worry.” Max motioned for them to come closer, then whispered, “He
isn’t one.”

The sisters straightened, glanced at each
other, then back at the old white house.

“Hmm.” Viola pushed up the brim of her hat a
tad. “A writer. Must be why he looks familiar.”

Livy let out a silent sigh of relief.

“And that would explain why he’s living in
the Alexander place.”

“Why?” Max asked.

“It’s haunted, child.”

“It is not!” Livy exclaimed.

“Don’t contradict me, Olivia. Of course it’s
haunted. All the best houses in Savannah are.”

“Is yours?” Max piped up.

“Certainly. The judge stops by every
afternoon at three for tea.”

Livy bit back her disbelief. The sisters
could still box her ears if they were of a mind. But if they were
holding regular conversations with their dead daddy, maybe she
didn’t need to worry that one of them would connect Garrett to J.J.
anytime soon.
Maybe.

As Miss Violet had said, all the good houses
were haunted, and all the true Savannahians believed in ghosts.
Perhaps that was why Livy had never truly fit in here, even though
she’d wanted to.

“Since Daddy started drifting about, have you
noticed the former owner doesn’t?” Miss Viola asked.

“Of course not, Sister. The judge loathed
that man. Said he was no better than a common horse thief. Why,
when Daddy bought the house he was never even told about the ghosts
it already had, or that the building had been built right on top of
a former cemetery.”

“Well, it’s hard not to hit a burial place
around here. The way they used to just bury people willy-nilly
wherever they pleased. Look at that Jewish cemetery right in the
middle of the road.”

“Ahem.” Livy cleared her throat, hesitated,
then couldn’t help herself. “They built the road through the
cemetery. Not the other way around.”

“Whatever, dear. The point is, Mama got no
sleep at all some nights, what with the slamming and scratching and
whispering. She finally buried a Bible in the backyard. Oh, Daddy
had a fit about that, I’ll tell you. Putting a perfectly good King
James into the ground. But when the commotion stopped, Mama just
smiled and Daddy shut up.”

Miss Violet nodded. “Which proves our point,
Olivia. There’s no need for a woman to shout or curse. If you’re
right, you’re right, and we so often are. Everything comes out in
the end.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Livy muttered.
“We’d better get going.”

She’d like to retreat before the sisters got
on a roll again. It was so hard to extricate oneself when they
were. Unfortunately Max had other ideas.

“Whose ghost lives at Mr. Stark’s?”

Max stared at Garrett’s house with as much
awe as he’d said Garrett’s name. Strangely enough, Max had never
been frightened of ghosts, probably because Rosie spoke of them at
breakfast, lunch and dinner as though they were just another friend
or relative—a habit most folks who lived in Savannah for very long
got into.

Miss Violet squinted at the house once more.
“I’m not certain who haunts the Alexander place.”

“Maybe an Alexander,” Livy said dryly.

Miss Violet gave her a sharp look. Livy tried
to appear innocent, but that was more difficult than it seemed when
you were guilty. How come so many of her clients had no trouble
with it?

Miss Violet tilted her head so she could
focus her entire attention on Max. Her huge hat wobbled but didn’t
fall down. “Hasn’t your grandmother told you all the ghost stories?
If Rosie insists on being in trade, you’d at least think she’d be
good at it.”

For the sisters, being a guide was a trade.
Of course, being a lawyer was a sin. Unless you were a judge.
Somehow that was okay.

“Rosie’s the best ghost-walk guide in town.”
Max defended his favorite person in the world.

“I wouldn’t know, but I have heard she does
her business well.”

Miss Violet said “business” with a little
tilt to her mouth and twist to her voice that made Livy remember
the way the judge had always said “lady of the night." The sisters
had never much cared for Rosie. In their eyes, she’d married
beneath her—a Yankee carpetbagger, no less.

No matter how many times the two had been
told that Rosie’s husband was a
carpenter,
not a
carpetbagger,
they didn’t get it, or perhaps they chose not
to. Just as no matter how many times folks reminded them the war
was over—a war they hadn’t even been alive to see fought—they could
still sneer
Yankee
better than Vivien Leigh. To make matters
worse, Rosie had also committed the unpardonable sin of leaving her
mother to live alone in her old age.