Playing Dead in Dixie (8 page)

"JUST RUN YOUR FINGER ALONG the hull seam, like this."  Bonnie Strickland slid the pea hull open and raked the peas inside into the bowl on her lap.

Carly picked up a fat purple hull and mimicked the movements of Bonnie's nimble fingers.  The hull popped open, and a couple of peas tumbled into the bowl on her lap.  She gave the other peas a nudge with her fingertip and they plopped into the bowl beside the others.  She picked up another purple hull and repeated the process.

So this was shucking peas.  Hmm.  Not as alien a process as she'd expected when Bonnie first suggested it.

Outside the kitchen, the light had taken on a warm, golden glow as the sun dipped toward the horizon, a reminder that day number six in Bangor, Georgia, had almost passed, and Carly was still hanging around town.

She'd promised herself she'd be out of town within a week, had even added another hundred dollars to her stash, thanks to Floyd taking pity on her and paying her wages Friday in cash instead of a check.  Three hundred dollars would get her back to Savannah, for sure, or maybe she'd head south toward Valdosta, see what kind of work she could find there.

She needed to keep moving.  Harder to hit a moving target.

But there were other considerations.  Like Floyd and his problems at the store.  She hadn't yet figured out a way to get a look at his books, but she wanted to give it a whirl before she headed out of town.  If what Wes had told her was correct, the hardware store shouldn't be having financial troubles.

Carly thought maybe the problem was with Sherry and her non-existent math degree.  Or perhaps someone was skimming money off the receipts and covering it up somehow.  She wouldn't know until she got a look at the books.

There was also Shannon Burgess to think about.  Carly couldn't run out and leave her holding the bag at the fabric store.  Shannon had already put in a lot of hard work into making the outfits Carly had ordered.  Carly would have to keep working long enough to pay Shannon for the clothes.

And then there was Wes.

He hadn't come around since Thursday night, when he'd left her on the front porch after driving her home from his father's house.  She'd expected to see him at church on Sunday when she'd attended with Bonnie and Floyd, but neither Wes nor his father had been there, an absence significant enough that everyone Carly had met that day commented on it.

Maybe Mr. Hollingsworth had been sore from his fall.  Maybe Wes was tending to him.

Or maybe the chief was just avoiding her.

"You're doin' great, honey.  I may put you to snappin' beans next."  Bonnie tossed the last hull into the garbage bowl and crossed to the sink to run water over her peas.   "You ever snapped beans?"

Carly finished emptying her last hull and rose as well.  "No, we mostly got our vegetables already frozen."

"That's a shame.  There's nothin' quite like vegetables fresh from your own garden."  Bonnie took the bowl of peas from her and ran them under water as well.  She nodded at Carly's hands.  "You'll want to go wash those hands."

Carly looked down at her fingers and found them stained purple from the hulls.  "Will it come off?" she asked, alarmed.

Bonnie smiled.  "You may have to scrub it a bit."

Carly hurried to the bathroom and took a bar of soap to her hands, scrubbing until the sudsy water ran lavender.  She managed to get most of the stain off, although the tips of her fingernails remained faintly purple.  Blotting her hands dry with a towel, she stepped out into the hallway.

And collided with one hundred and ninety pounds of solid, muscular male.

She gazed up at Wes, her pulse ratcheting up a notch.  He slid his hands under her elbows, steadying her.  She half expected an apology—he was a polite Southern boy, after all—but he remained silent, his dark gaze settling on her lips.  He filled the narrow hallway, sucking the oxygen from the air with the sheer force of his presence, until Carly's head felt light and cottony.  Her body thrumming with awareness, she took a step back just to find room to breathe.  Her back connected solidly with the wall of the hallway behind her.

Wes's eyes darkened.  He took a step toward her, closing the distance she had opened, and lifted one hand to rest on the wall beside her head.  "Still here, I see."

His low growl set her nerves humming at a higher pitch.  She struggled to keep her reply even.  "You really need to make up your mind, Chief Wes.  Do you want me to stay or go?"

He cocked his head slightly, his gaze still fixed on her mouth.  "That's the question, isn't it?"

He smelled good.  Male, spicy warm, laced with a whiff of soap, suggesting he'd showered before he came over.

Tantalizing thought.  Brought all sorts of intriguing images to mind.

He bent closer, and she saw a fresh nick on the underside of his jaw.  Bathed
and
shaved.  Well, well.

Maybe he had a date, she told her traitorous mind.  His good grooming might have nothing to do with her at all.

But the hungry look in his dark eyes as they lifted to meet hers suggested otherwise.  "Eaten dinner yet?"

She shook her head.  "Bonnie's cooking peas and cornbread.  I shucked the peas myself."

His lips curved.  "
Shelled
the peas.  You shell peas.  You shuck corn.  And don't worry, she'll save you some leftovers."

Her stomach fluttered.  "I won't be here?"

He shook his head slowly.  "You're coming with me."

She lifted her chin, forcing herself to remain outwardly cool, even as her heart tripped wildly in her breast.  "Does this caveman act impress the Bangor ladies?"

"You haven't seen my caveman act yet, sugar."

"So, you just walk in here and I'm supposed to go with you because you say so?"

"No, you're supposed to go with me because you're the kind of girl who can't resist a surprise."  He tipped her chin up with one finger.  "Right?"

Spot on, actually, but she wasn't ready to admit it.  "I'll have to check my appointment book."

"You don't have any appointments."  He ran his finger down her throat and over her collarbone before dropping his hand back to his side.  "And my surprise has an expiration date."

"Mysterious," she murmured, trying to ignore the shivery fire his light, intimate touch had ignited.

"And you love a mystery, don't you?"

Breathing was becoming difficult.  "When are we leaving?"

He backed away, glancing at his watch.  "How soon can you change?"

"Into what?"

His dark eyes glittered with humor.  "You do know how to ask a leading question."

She found her own lips curving with a nascent smile.  "Should I dress up or go casual?"

"What you're wearing is fine."  Wes leaned against the wall, folding his arms and looking her slowly up and down.  She seemed to feel his gaze, like invisible fingertips moving feather-light across her skin.

She looked down at her attire.  Jeans and a yellow t-shirt she'd borrowed from Bonnie.  The jeans fit nicely, showing off her long legs, but the t-shirt was oversized and a very unflattering color.  Hardly something she'd wear on a hot date.

And if the rapid-fire cadence of her pulse was any indication, this particular date might be a pretty hot one.

"Let me put on a different top, at least."  She slipped past him, out of the hallway into her bedroom, where the air seemed less heated.

She had found a cute black tank tee in a thrift shop in Savannah during her brief stop there.  Spaghetti straps and a bodice cut in at the waist to show off her shape.  She slipped it over her head and checked her reflection in the dresser mirror.

She looked pretty.  There was no vanity in the observation, just a statement of fact.  Of her mother's three daughters, she was the pretty one.

"Use what God gave ya," was her mother's favorite saying.  For Carly's sister Lorna, providence had given her an affinity for nurturing, a gift that had earned her babysitting money and later a job at a Trenton day care.  For Teresa, her interest in mechanical things had led to a job in a Philadelphia machine shop and good union wages.

For Carly, her looks were supposed to be her ticket out.  She'd been the only one of the three to inherit both her Irish mother's green eyes and her father's long, sooty lashes and wavy black hair.  Her lithe, curvy figure was a feminine echo of her father's lean, muscular build, her clear, pale skin a gift from her Irish mother.

"Lorna and Teresa, bless their souls, they'll be havin' to study all the time," her mother always said.  "But you're my pretty one.  You'll be the one to find ya a fine fellow who can take ya away from here and you'll be happy as clams in butter."

But Carly hadn't waited for someone to take her away.  She'd gotten out as soon as she could, hit the road and kept moving.  Anything to avoid the trap her mother had stepped into all those years ago.

Carly left the bedroom, half expecting to find Wes still standing in the hallway, waiting for her.  But he was gone, only the faint scent of him still lingering in the air.

She followed the scent to the kitchen and found Wes at the at the table, talking to Bonnie.   A large wicker picnic basket sat on the table between them.

"Well, don't you look pretty as a picture!"  Bonnie smiled up at Carly, a matchmaker's gleam in her eyes.

"Ready to go?" Wes asked, a very different sort of gleam in his eyes, a dark, sizzling look that made Carly's knees tremble.

"Where are we going?" Carly countered.

"You'll see when we get there."  Wes unfolded his long legs, bending to kiss his aunt on the cheek.  "Thanks for the pickles, Aunt Bonnie."  He picked up the picnic basket and gestured with his head.  "Comin', Jersey?"

Not waiting for her answer, he turned and strode through the doorway leading to the back porch.

"Go ahead, honey, he don't bite," Bonnie said, still grinning like she'd just won the lottery.

"Do
you
know where we're going?" Carly asked.

Bonnie shook her head.  "But wherever it is, he stopped by Sharlene Crump's house and picked up a Mississippi Mud Cake."

Carly lowered her voice.  "Is that good?"

"That's very good," Bonnie assured her.

Wes stuck his head through the doorway.  "Are you comin' or not?"

It was probably a very bad idea to go anywhere alone with Wes Hollingsworth.  He'd already proved, more than once, that he could get under her skin with little effort.  What kind of secrets would he be able to wheedle out of her if he applied even a touch more of the sizzling seduction he'd teased her with in the hallway a few minutes earlier?

Maybe she was her father's daughter after all.  Because she couldn't seem to walk away from this particular gamble, no matter how high the odds against her.

She followed Wes out to his truck.  He surprised her by opening the door for her and giving her his hand to help her climb up into the cab.  "Buckle up."  He rounded the front of the truck and climbed into the cab.

As he buckled his own seat belt, Carly murmured, "In New Jersey, no girl in her right mind would go off somewhere with a man she barely knew, especially if he didn't tell her where they were going."

He turned and pinned her with the full force of his dark, smoldering gaze.  "This ain't Jersey, sugar.  And I doubt you've ever been in your right mind."

"Not even a hint where we're going?"

His eyes darkened, igniting a slow burn deep in her belly.  "You're just going to have to trust me.  Think you can do that?"

"We'll see," she answered, not quite ready to concede.

He turned back to the wheel and cranked the engine, a smile lingering in the corners of his mouth.  "Yes, you will."

"Is that a warning?"

He cut his eyes at her again, his smile widening.

Alarm klaxons screamed in her head.

Warning, she thought.

Definitely a warning.

Chapter Five

Being alone with Carly Devlin under a crescent moon, gazing up at about a billion stars, was what any sane man would call flirting with danger.  And Wes Hollingsworth had given up flirting with danger years ago.

At least, he'd thought he had.  Until he'd laid out the blanket in the back of his pickup truck and realized that all those ads about roomy truck beds didn't take into consideration the full impact of Carly Devlin in a little black tank top and a pair of tight blue jeans.

Between the picnic basket, the Coleman lantern, and Carly's hip butting up against his own, the back of the truck felt as tiny as a closet.

"Where are we, anyway?" Carly asked, picking through the picnic basket.

"It's a piece of land I've had for a few years.  I'm thinking about finally getting around to planting a few things this year.  Corn, green beans, tomatoes, maybe some watermelons."  He couldn't get too ambitious, since he worked full time for the police department.  "Nothing quite like having fresh vegetables you grow yourself."

"That's what Bonnie says."  Carly pulled a small pie platter from the basket.  "Ooo, chocolate!"

"That's Mississippi Mud Cake," Wes told her as she pulled the plastic covering off the chocolate confection.

She looked at him.  "Really?  Not quite what I'd pictured."

He took the platter and served her one of the pre-cut squares on a small plastic plate.  "You've never had Mississippi Mudcake?"

"I've heard of it."  Carly picked at the plank of fudge icing crusting the top of the cake.  "I had a friend once whose husband would take her out for a piece every time he was in the doghouse.  But I've never tried it."

"I can take or leave chocolate—"

Carly looked up quickly, feigning a gasp and crossing herself.

"—but my cousin Beth calls it sin on a platter."

"That sounds promising."  Carly poked at the icing some more, unearthing a marshmallow.  "Is this a marshmallow?"

"Yup."

"Good.  I was afraid maybe it was grits or something."  She shuddered.  "You people do like your grits around here."

He grinned.  "Culinary cretin."