Sweet Talk Me (30 page)

“What’s wrong with that one?” Vince’s tone was wistful as they cruised by at ten miles an hour (the local police were hell on speeders).

“If we got a lot of tourists here, she’d do fine,” Gage explained. “But we don’t. Biscuit Creek isn’t Disney World.”

Vince whistled when he first caught sight of Maybank Hall. “Talk about authentic South. Am I on the set of
Gone With the Wind
? Is this Twelve Oaks come back to life?”

“Twelve Oaks had imposing columns,” Gage piped up from the backseat. “This house is in the Federalist style but with a whimsical southern bent, as evidenced by the preponderance of porches, rockers, and dogs.”

“Right.” Vince shot Harrison a discreet look.

“I told ya he was smart.” Harrison decided to spin out his tires when he parked in front of the house as it was going to be his last time returning to Maybank Hall, and he was feeling distinctly pent up. Being with True in the water that day, messing around with her, and then not being able to find a little Marvin Gaye–style sexual healing himself—as much as he didn’t mind; he was a gentleman, after all—was costing him his usual mellow state of mind.

Besides, there were two guys in the car. He had to show off.

But when he saw True in the kitchen, he was especially glad he was only one of a crowd. He’d called to let her know they were coming with supper, and he’d asked her to break the news to Weezie that the Gamble boys were moving out the next day.

“Hey,” he said when True looked up from placing silverware on the table.

“Hey.” She was cute as a button. Sexy, too, in a simple little white blouse and flimsy pink skirt with modest slits on each side that made him want to pull it up to see more gorgeous thigh. She smiled at Gage and Vince, not Harrison, which was entirely okay. They needed to keep those barriers going. “It’s so nice to see you again,” she told Vince.

“You, too.” He gazed at her like he couldn’t get enough of her. “Your accent is to die for. And I love how all of you say
hey
instead of
hi
. I thought
hey is for horses
, but obviously not around here.”

“Everywhere but the South,” Gage agreed. “Jonathan Swift used that phrase in
A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation
in 1738.”

There was a brief silence until one of the dogs burped. For real. Harrison couldn’t believe it.

“
Striker
.” Weezie had obviously ID’d the offender.

True held out her arm to indicate her sister. “This is Weezie,” she said gaily.

Weezie, who’d been folding napkins, tried her best not to stare at Vince’s army-green dress, another athletic sort of garment with a wraparound belt that reminded Harrison of hostels and hiking.

“I hear you want to be a talk show host.” Vince pumped her hand hard. “Sounds like a great goal. If you ever need a place to stay in LA, please consider my guest house.”

“Thank you very much.” Weezie sounded almost a little shy—or maybe it was that she was preoccupied. She’d had that date, after all.

“How’d it go today with Stephen Tyler?” Harrison asked.

Weezie’s face lit up. “Great. I’m going to hang out with him again in Charleston in two days. I’m going shopping for some school clothes.”

True met his eyes. They both could tell she was counting the hours.

Dinner was fun. It was as if nothing had happened between him and True at all. And a great side effect of Weezie’s being distracted by this boy—and school—was the fact that she wasn’t nearly as upset that Gage and Harrison were leaving the next day as he thought she’d be.

The only time it got awkward was when Gage and Vince went out on the porch to smoke cigars. Harrison couldn’t. They affected his vocal cords too much. Weezie went upstairs to fill out some new paperwork from Trident Tech that came in the mail that day, and she was also probably sneaking off to text Stephen.

That left Harrison and True in the kitchen.

He brushed her elbow when he walked by her with a couple of plates. The lyrics to “Sexual Healing” flooded his brain.

Aw, hell. “Sorry,” he said.

“No problem,” she said back.

Yep. They were both pretty self-conscious.

“Any luck with Booty Call?” He picked up several wineglasses and set them by the sink.

“Lots of it,” she said. “I booked them. Same with the tents, the tables and chairs, and the dance floor.” She sounded satisfied. Not overjoyed, necessarily, but considering what had happened between them earlier in the day, he wasn’t surprised.

He smiled at her the same way he smiled on PR junkets. “That’s great.”

“It is.” She busied herself around the sink and looked back at him. “I can handle this. Thanks for helping clear the table.”

“Are you sure?” He came up next to her and flipped over a butter knife on the counter to look busy, but he really wanted to smell her hair. “You’ve had a long day. Brides need their rest.”

She pulled out a dish towel and put on one of Honey’s aprons, the yellow one with dancing apples all over it. “I’ll be done in no time.”

Her voice. It was so … hollow. And seeing her so despondent in that cheerful but ridiculous apron just broke his heart.

“True.” She wouldn’t look up at him. He wanted to tilt up her chin—hell, he wanted to take her in his arms—but he didn’t dare touch her. “You’re
not
a bad person.”

She stood quietly for a second, then gave a brief nod. “Thanks.”

“Please stop torturing yourself by wearing tacky aprons.” He went to the drawer where they were kept and pulled out a white one with blue trim. “This one next time. Okay?” He lifted his brows comically high.

But she didn’t laugh. “I haven’t called Dubose. And the only texts we shared were about the car.”

“Car?”

“It’s in the barn. A Beemer. He bought it for me.”

“Whoa. Nice gift.” But so unlike True. He’d get her an SUV, if he had the choice. He folded the white apron back up in thirds, like a towel—his mother had taught him how; it was his one housekeeping skill—and shoved it to the back of the drawer. “He’s on a business trip. You’re fixing your wedding. You’re both seriously occupied. The car was a nice gesture.”

“No, it wasn’t.” She sounded bitter. “Not really.”

He wouldn’t ask. But he suspected. Dubose was prepping her to be Mrs. Fancy Lawyer’s Wife.

“The wedding’s in a week,” she went on. It was like salt in an open wound, but Harrison maintained an easy expression. “We’re supposed to be thinking of each other.” She winced. “I wasn’t thinking of him at all this morning. Obviously.”

She’d been kissing the socks off Harrison. Pumping her pretty little pelvis against his like a female Elvis. Lord, have mercy, that woman was—

He slapped his sex drive down. “I take the blame for that, all right?” He did, too. He’d kissed her first. “Move on from this morning.”

She stared out the back-door window, where the sun had set and left a streak of orange behind the oaks and pines.

“If you were in a fairy tale,” he said, “maybe everything would be all hearts and flowers a hundred percent of the time. But this is real life. Real problems happen. Sometimes big ones. If you love someone, you work them out. And that’s all there is to it.”

True sighed. “You’re right, I guess.” She sent him a small, worried smile. “I think after I’m done here I’m heading to bed. Could you please send Vince my best?”

“Will do.”

“See you in the morning for breakfast.”

Served up with a side of happiness
.

How long ago that day seemed, when he’d first arrived in Biscuit Creek, and it hadn’t even been a week ago.

“Good night,” he said from the door.

“Good night,” she called to him, but didn’t look over her shoulder. She definitely wanted to do those dishes in peace.

He, Gage, and Vince hung out on the porch a long while before a limo came and picked the house designer up and took him back to his hotel in Charleston.

“He’s a good guy,” Gage said. “I can’t tell if he’s straight or gay. Not that I care. Just curious.”

Harrison sat on the front porch steps. “I wondered, too, at first, but you forget about that really quick with him. I think it’s because he’s always about other people. Not himself.”

Harrison was rich, successful, creative—to an extent—but he was hyper-focused on building his own career. Yes, he was floating other people’s boats by doing so. That was a good thing. But who was he also leaving behind?

“You know, it’s not your fault that Dad got taken to jail,” Gage said.

“What the hell?” Harrison sat frozen. “Why are you bringing this up?”

Gage let Ed join him on the porch swing because Ed was that kind of dog. “I know you blame yourself. You hung out at the still when Dad wasn’t there. I used to watch you from the trees.”

“I know you did—”

“And I saw everything that day the sheriff came by. He followed you out into the woods straight to the still. He pulled everything out as evidence and arrested Dad when he got off the shrimp boat.”

“Shut up, man. I know all that.” Harrison took a deep, shaky breath. “Dad told me never to go there, and I went all the time. It
is
my fault. The sheriff was always telling me hello. Now I know why. I was the son of the criminal he wanted to catch. He was hoping I’d say something, do something, to help his cause.”

“Dad made his choices. You shouldn’t be held responsible.”

“I know that in my head, but in my gut—”

“The day Dad got arrested wasn’t the first time the sheriff had been out to the still.”

“Wait a second.” Harrison shook his head. “What’re you talking about?”

“I was up in my favorite tree one day, and he came looking for Mrs. Nelson. Remember her? She lived a few trailers over?”

“Yeah. She had a steady stream of boyfriends.”

“Exactly. I think the sheriff was one of them. I heard him on his cell phone talking to her. She was playing coy. Leading him on a wild goose chase through the woods. She used to go down to the boat landing on the edge of the woods where it met the marsh. She’d cast her shrimp net there. That’s probably where she was when he called her.”

“So?”

“She made the sheriff find her. Kind of like hide-and-seek with sex at the end. The sheriff found her, yes, but not before he stumbled upon the still in the process. I heard him talking on the phone about it. You had nothing to do with him discovering it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. I wanted to tell Dad, but he was on the trawler for a whole week. And when he came back, he was home for only one day before he got caught. I blame myself for not warning him that day—but he was so happy to see Mom and us. I was trying to work up my nerve. So I’m more to blame than you.”

“No. You can’t take the blame.”

“Why not?” Gage asked. “You are.”

“God.” Harrison rubbed his eyes. “Even if you’d told Dad, the sheriff would’ve got him anyway. He wouldn’t have run. He wasn’t the type to abandon us.”

“No, he wouldn’t have,” Gage agreed. “And we’re not to blame for the fact that he died in jail. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. So were we, each in our own way.”

Harrison bowed his head. So many lives had changed when Dad was taken away.

“He was just making hooch,” he whispered. “Five years in jail was rough. I didn’t agree with the law, but I understood. Even Daddy did. But to lose his life there—three weeks after he arrived?”

“I know.” Gage sighed. “And what’s so ironic is that micro-distilleries are popping up everywhere these days. Down in Charleston a guy’s selling his own blend on King Street and making a pretty penny.”

They sat quietly a minute. The locusts were loud, buzzing their evening song. And the moon—God, it was gorgeous. It hung high in the sky. The weatherman had said it was an especially luminous one—a super moon, he called it. Now Harrison knew that the moon he’d looked at with True a long time ago on the Isle of Palms had been the same kind.

“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?” Harrison eventually asked his brother.

“It never occurred to me that you might blame yourself,” said Gage. “The truth is, I haven’t thought much about what you were thinking. I’m usually thinking about me. Or words. But the last couple days I’ve noticed more about you. Being in the trailer with you today especially took me back. It made me wonder if you’ve ever been happy since Dad was arrested. That’s why I’m telling you now what really happened. I don’t think you’re happy. And I can tell you feel guilty about me. Look at this house you’re building for me.”

“It’s not from guilt, Gage. It’s because I love you. Are you gonna make me keep saying mushy stuff like that? Because I’m about to kick your ass.”

“Shut up a second.” Ed whined on the swing, and Gage scratched his ears. “This isn’t easy for me, either. You’ve always felt guilty about me. I hung around you and your friends because I never made my own. And—and I never tried to take that load off your back. Ever. I just took it for granted that you’d always be there.”

“You should have taken it for granted. That’s what brothers are for.”

“Well, I want to be a brother to
you
now. I want to take this crazy burden off you. Dad and Mom would have wanted me to. I’m the big brother. And I’m going to try to act more like one from now on.”

Harrison didn’t say anything. He was filled with all sorts of emotions. It was like being in the dark and bumping into one thing after the other, and you had to reach out and feel it, whatever it was, and just hope it wasn’t something really gross or scary with fangs.

“Well?” Gage waited.

“I don’t know what to say.” It was the story of his life lately—at least his songwriting life.

Gage chuckled. “You’re usually the one running off at the mouth.”

Harrison gulped. “I know.” He stood.

Gage stood.

Ed didn’t move. No way was he giving up his seat on the swing. But he was watching them both and panting his little heart out.

The two brothers hugged.

“Thanks,” Harrison said over Gage’s shoulder.

“One more thing,” Gage told him when they broke apart. “True asked me what Dubose Waring’s name was as an anagram. You know, there are so many combinations of letters, most of them nonsensical.”