Sweet Tea at Sunrise (4 page)

He nodded, his expression sobering. “I’ll keep that in mind. As much of a kick as I’m getting out of all this wild speculation, I certainly don’t want to embarrass Grace.”

“You almost sounded sincere just then,” she said, regarding him with surprise.

“I am sincere. I like Grace. She’s one of the reasons I decided to stick around Serenity. Places like Wharton’s turn a town into a community.”

Sarah was even more startled that he’d grasped that after such a short time. Maybe he’d fit in here, after all. She decided to try one last tactic to see if she could pry a little information out of him.

“I could always fill her in on your plans, if you just want to tell me,” she offered casually. “I might even be able to swear her to secrecy for the time being.”

Travis laughed. “Now, sugar, I’d put my faith in you when it comes to most things, but I’ve seen Grace in action. There’s not a secret on earth that would be safe with her.”

Oddly enough, it didn’t sound like an insult the way he said it. It was almost as if he viewed her pride in spreading gossip as a good thing, even a necessary thing. That’s the way most folks in town looked at it, as a frequently exasperating but much loved grapevine that kept them all informed.

“Which makes her a valuable resource, if you ask me,” Sarah said, defending Grace. “As much as it might annoy people to have their business turn into today’s hot topic, at least it keeps most things out in the open. There’s not a lot of secret backstabbing that goes on in Serenity.”

“And how many small towns can make a claim like that?” Travis said, clearly amused by the boast.

Sarah regarded him with a narrowed gaze, not quite sure whether to take him seriously or if he was making fun of the town. “If you ask me, it’s a good thing,” she said.

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said. His gaze darkened and he reached out as if he intended to touch her, but
then dropped his hand back to his side. “In fact, I’m counting on pretty much everything being out in the open before long.”

Sarah puzzled over Travis’s comment for most of the afternoon. How a man capable of being so secretive could want things out in the open made no sense. She’d repeated the gist of the conversation to Grace, who didn’t know what to make of it, either. Now Sarah tried it out on Raylene, as they sat on the patio with their sweet tea while the kids played in the backyard.

“I swear I think it was a hint,” she told Raylene. “I don’t think he was trying to be cryptic at all. But what could he have meant?”

“Maybe he’s a spy, or an investigative reporter and he’s here to do an exposé,” Raylene suggested.

Sarah regarded her with skepticism. “A spy in Serenity, South Carolina? What’s he supposed to be spying on? Or exposing, for that matter? It’s not as if there’s a lot of dirt to dig up in a town this size. Like I told him, Grace knows most everything that goes on around here, anyway. She certainly knows more than the local weekly newspaper.”

“Then I’m out of ideas,” Raylene said.

“I suppose we’ll all know soon enough,” Sarah said with a sigh. “I think I got through to him about not dragging this out much longer.” She turned her attention to Raylene, who looked drawn and nervous. “You okay? Did something happen around here today?”

If anything, her friend looked even more upset. “I had another panic attack,” she admitted. “The kids were out here playing, and I was sitting here watching them,
when Tommy went around the side of the house. When I called him, he didn’t answer. I tried to go after him, but when I got to the edge of the patio, it was like I ran into a wall or something. I couldn’t make myself take one more step. I started sweating and my hands were shaking. I finally managed to shout for him and, thank God, he came right back, but I think we need to take another look at me being alone with the kids, even for an hour or two.”

Sarah could see the worry and fear in her eyes. “I have every faith that if Tommy hadn’t come when you called, you would have gone looking for him.”

Raylene regarded her with frustration. “You’re not listening to me, Sarah. I couldn’t make myself move. I couldn’t!”

Sarah didn’t want Raylene to see that the incident worried her. She reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. Nothing happened. Tommy’s fine.”

“Next time, he might not be. I mean it, Sarah,” she said earnestly. “I’m happy to help out with the house, but I just can’t risk being responsible for Tommy and Libby. I know you’re trying to be supportive, but right now the only thing that matters is the well-being of your kids.”

“I know,” Sarah acknowledged. No matter how much faith she had in Raylene, she knew she couldn’t take a chance that it might be misplaced. “I just don’t want to see you taking another step to shut yourself away here. You know this is more than some temporary thing, Raylene. Not only has it gone on for months now, but you’re getting worse. You need to see someone, not for me or for the kids, but for you. Call Annie’s shrink. You
already know Dr. McDaniels from back when Annie was in the hospital with her anorexia. It won’t be like talking to a complete stranger.”

Raylene shook her head. “I know that makes sense, but I need to try to beat this on my own. I don’t want my independence to be one more thing my husband took away from me.”

“Hasn’t it already happened?” Sarah asked in frustration. “You’re already holed up here. You don’t see anyone except the people we invite over and the kids and me. That’s not living, Raylene.”

Raylene’s expression turned sad. “Believe it or not, it’s better than the life I had in Charleston.”

It sounded as if she were talking about more than the physical abuse to which she’d been subjected. “What do you mean?” Sarah asked. “What about all those fancy committees you told us you were on? All the fundraising you did?”

“All talk,” Raylene said. “I didn’t want you and Annie to know how bad things were. I couldn’t serve on committees, because I never knew what shape I’d be in. You can’t join those things and then never show up. Oh, I tried for the first year we were married, but then I got a reputation as someone who couldn’t be counted on. I quit everything after I heard a woman telling a committee chair not to give me an important assignment because I wouldn’t be around to follow through.”

“I had no idea,” Sarah whispered, understanding how much that must have hurt. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was my fault.”

“Being abused was not your fault,” Sarah said furiously. “The blame is all on that creep you married.”

“I chose him,” Raylene said. “And I stayed much too long, because every time I mentioned that I might leave him, my parents—well, my mother really—reminded me about all the wonderful things I’d be giving up. She didn’t believe for a minute that someone from such an upstanding family and in such a respectable profession could have a mean streak. In her mind, I had this idyllic marriage, the one she should have had.”

“What about your dad?”

“I never told him,” Raylene admitted. “I couldn’t. It would have destroyed him, especially if he’d found out that my mother knew and advised me to stay. I’m glad he’s gone now, so he’ll never find out about any of this.”

Sarah couldn’t imagine any mother who would knowingly let her daughter stay in an abusive relationship without fighting tooth and nail to get her out of it. She’d always thought that Raylene’s mother lived too much in her supposedly glorious past, that she complained too much about the pitiful life to which she’d been relegated in this little podunk town. This, though, turning her head when it came to Raylene’s marital mess was truly unconscionable.

“No wonder you haven’t spoken to your mother since you moved over here,” she told Raylene.

“She’s not as awful as this makes her sound,” Raylene said wearily. “She just wanted so badly for me to have the things she didn’t have with my dad.”

“Material things,” Sarah said with feeling. “Didn’t she know those aren’t half as important as love and respect? She always had that from your dad. He adored her.”

“But I don’t think she valued it as much as all the
sterling silver that I received as wedding gifts,” Raylene said. “And to be honest, at first neither did I. Thanks to you and Annie, I think I’m finally beginning to put my life back into perspective and to get my priorities straight.”

“That’s huge,” Sarah said, giving her a congratulatory high-five.

Raylene gave her a rueful grin. “Yeah, now if my life only went beyond the boundaries of your house and this patio, everything would be just peachy.”

W
alter cursed himself every which way for mentioning to his father that Sarah had gotten a job and that the kids were spending time with a sitter. He was still struggling to make peace with it himself, and his father had finally called him on his distracted mood. Walter had told him about the situation, which was turning out to be yet another of his huge mistakes.

“You’re letting a woman like that, a woman who’s obviously not a good mother, get away with stealing your son!” Marshall Price accused Walter, his expression filled with disdain. “What kind of man does that?”

“Sarah hasn’t stolen Tommy,” Walter replied wearily. He was sick to death of the recriminations that were tossed at him every damn day since the divorce was finalized. “The custody arrangement guarantees I can see him every other weekend. Sarah doesn’t object if I come more often.”

“You have to see him in South Carolina,” Marshall said with a sneer, as if that were akin to Timbuktu. “How’s the boy supposed to learn about his legacy when he doesn’t spend a minute with his family here in Alabama?”

“He’s barely four. He doesn’t need to learn how to
run a cotton mill just yet,” Walter replied for about the hundredth time. “Let it go, Dad. Maybe if you and mom hadn’t been so mean and spiteful to Sarah, she wouldn’t have taken Tommy and Libby and left town. I offered to buy her a house here in town, any house she wanted, but she said she could hardly wait to get away from the two of you.”

Not that he didn’t bear his own share of the blame. There were times when Walter felt as if he’d let his parents brainwash him about Sarah. It was interesting that she’d called him on just that last weekend when he’d been over to Serenity for a visit. He hadn’t wanted to hear it, of course, but he could see now that she’d been right. His view of Sarah had started changing the minute he’d brought her home to Alabama to live.

How many times had he heard that she wasn’t good enough? How many times had his mother criticized her housekeeping, her social skills, her desire to teach? And, of course, the worst sin of all was that she’d gotten pregnant before they were married. They acted as if she’d done that all on her own, then treated the wedding as if it were an occasion for shame.

The real shame, of course, was that he’d let them get away with it. No, it was worse than that. It was that he’d taken up the same rallying cries. Sometimes when he looked back on his marriage, he wondered who the hell he’d been. Certainly not the man Sarah had met at college, a man so crazy about her he’d known almost instantly that she was the one he wanted to marry. He’d let his parents’ nonstop criticisms erode not just the passion, but also the respect he’d always felt for Sarah.

Sadly, none of these things had occurred to him
before it was too late. It was only after Sarah had gone, after the divorce was in motion, that he began to see the strong woman he’d fallen for in college. When he stopped to analyze it, which he didn’t very often, he knew that was why he continued to lash out at her, like the other day when he’d criticized her taking a job in that diner. He’d heard those critical words coming out of his mouth, known how arrogant and superior he sounded, but he hadn’t been able to shut up.

As frustrating as it had been at the time, a part of him admired Sarah for standing up to him, defending her decision to work and defending Wharton’s. He wished she’d done more of that when they’d been married. Things might have turned out differently.

“I suppose you’re going over there again tomorrow with your tail between your legs,” Marshall said disparagingly.

Fed up in a way he’d never expected to be, Walter stood and threw down the pen in his hand. “No,” he said, drawing yet another disappointed look from his father. “As a matter of fact, I’m going over there right now.”

His father seemed to take that as a good sign. “If I were you, I’d just pick Tommy up and bring him straight back here. Nobody around here would dare to take that boy away from his daddy. They’d have to answer to me.”

Walter shook his head. “I’m not surprised you’d want to go that route, and you know what? It makes me glad Tommy’s with his mama, because the last thing I want for any son of mine is for him to grow up to be anything like his granddaddy, thinking the whole world needs to bow and scrape to him.”

The veins in his father’s forehead pulsed, and his
complexion turned an interesting shade of purple. “Don’t you dare talk to me like that, boy! My whole life’s been about you and making sure you had a legacy to be proud of. I’d think twice before mouthing off to me and throwing it all away.”

“Do you honestly think I want to be trapped here in this one-horse town running a cotton mill?” Walter demanded before he could stop himself. “I had my own dream, and, believe me, this wasn’t it. But I came back here because it was what you expected.”

Facing down his father was something he should have done years ago, but he hadn’t. Only recently had he realized why. “I figured I owed you because of all you’d done for me,” he said now. “And even you can’t deny that I’ve done a damn good job for you. I even gave you the grandson you were so anxious to have, so the Price legacy would be assured. Well, you know what? I’m done worrying about you and what you want. I’m going to start trying to figure out what I want, and then I’m going after it.”

He saw his father’s complexion turn ashen as he watched Walter heading for the door.

“You come back here this minute!” Marshall shouted, slamming his fist down on the desk, sending papers and a coffee cup flying.

“Sorry, Dad. I’m done dancing to your tune.” Walter let that sink in, then added, “When I get back here—
if
I come back here—things are going to have to change. You’re going to have to show some respect for me or I will leave, and next time it will be for good.”

He walked out before his father could respond, shutting the door emphatically behind him.

Not until he was outside in the fresh air and on his way to Serenity did he think about the ramifications of what he’d done. It had felt too good to finally say all the things that had been building up ever since he’d come home with the girl he loved only to be sucked into a life he didn’t want.

Unfortunately, he knew there’d be hell to pay on Monday. Marshall Price didn’t take disrespect lightly. For all Walter knew he’d come back and find the locks on the mill had been changed and his house slapped with a foreclosure sign by the bank. His dad and the bank’s chairman were golfing buddies. He wouldn’t hesitate to do Marshall a favor, legalities be damned.

But for one glorious moment on Thursday afternoon, Walter felt like his old self, a man worthy of respect. Maybe even worthy of love. Probably not Sarah’s, of course. There was too much water under that bridge. It would have to be someone else who could make him feel the way she once had…as if he’d hung the moon.

On Saturday morning Travis looked around his new radio station with satisfaction. Bill Roberts, the prior owner of the station, had been in here for the past week checking out all the new equipment, setting up the studio so it was ready to go on the air, advising Travis on a million details. Roberts was the kind of man who was meant to mentor. Endlessly patient, he was generous with his time and expertise. He had a wicked sense of humor, as well, something Travis could definitely appreciate.

Bill walked into the little foyer, plucked an ice-cold Coke from the cooler and settled his lanky frame
into one of the two chairs. “You ready to make your big announcement?”

Travis grinned. “I should be asking you that question. Am I?”

“Seems to me everything’s in place. What time’s the press conference?”

Calling a press conference in Serenity wasn’t exactly the same as calling one in Charleston or up in Boston, where the sports reporters had lined up to get a glimpse of him after his signing with the Red Sox. Here, there was only the local weekly to worry about, so Travis had actually opted for inviting the entire town to the formal unveiling of the radio station. It would be another two weeks before they officially went on the air, but it was time to let the cat out of the bag. Past time, according to Grace. Given all the wild speculation lately, he was counting on a large crowd.

“Ten o’clock,” Travis told Bill. “But there’s one thing I need to do before we get started.”

Bill regarded him approvingly. “You’re going to invite Grace Wharton over for a private tour, aren’t you?”

“I think she’s entitled,” Travis said. “She’s practically worried herself sick over this. At least she’ll have a fighting chance of telling a few people the news before I do.”

“Smart move,” Bill said. “She’s definitely a woman you want on your side.”

“I wonder how she’s going to feel when I tell her I want to steal Sarah away from her?”

Bill chuckled. “I predict that one’s not going to go over so well. You might want to call over to the military base in Sumter and see if they have a spare suit of body armor you can borrow.”

“You’re not half as funny as you think you are,” Travis said. “This could get very dicey.”

“Then better to get it over with so we can patch you up before the big official announcement,” Bill told him. “I think I have some kind of superhero bandages in the car from my last outing with the grandkids.”

Travis gave him a friendly, one-fingered salute, then walked out the door. He figured the next half hour or so could mean the difference between kicking his new venture off with a bang or being pilloried around town. He’d spent most of his life charming women, but all of a sudden he discovered it had never mattered more. Who knew the biggest challenge he’d ever faced would be a round, older woman who looked a lot like Santa’s wife?

Wharton’s was packed with customers, something Travis hadn’t considered when he’d come up with this plan to steal Grace away. In fact, the upcoming press conference had apparently drawn even more people than usual into town.

Still, he managed to corner Sarah by the counter. “I need to borrow Grace for maybe fifteen minutes. Can you manage on your own?”

She regarded him with alarm. “Are you out of your mind? Look at this place. Thanks to this big whoop-de-do announcement you’re planning, we’re packed.”

“Okay, how about five minutes? It’s really important.” When she shook her head again, he looked around and spotted Ronnie Sullivan. He’d heard from Tom that Ronnie helped out from time to time at Sullivan’s. He walked over to the counter.

“Hey, Ronnie.”

Ronnie gave him a slap on the back. “You ready for your big day?”

“I think so, but I’m in a bind. I need to take Grace over to my place. Unfortunately, Sarah says she can’t handle this crowd on her own. Would you mind pitching in? I just need a few minutes.”

“You want Grace to have a preview of what’s going to happen this morning, don’t you?” Ronnie guessed.

At Travis’s nod, Ronnie left his coffee on the counter and grabbed an apron from behind it. “Sarah, I’m going to pinch-hit for Grace for a bit. I’ll try to keep up.”

Sarah’s gaze narrowed as she turned back to Travis. “How’d you pull that off?”

“Don’t ask questions. Just be grateful. I’ll have Grace back in a jiffy.”

He found her in the kitchen with a tray loaded down with meals. Fortunately Ronnie had followed him. He took the tray from Grace’s hands before she had time to object.

“What the devil?” she muttered irritably as Ronnie left.

“I’m stealing you away,” Travis told her. “You’re going to get a sneak peek at my new venture.”

All signs of annoyance immediately vanished. “Now?”

“Right this minute, before anyone else.”

Her face immediately lit up with excitement. “Well, it’s about time you showed some respect for me, young man!”

She hurried along beside him, looking triumphant as she walked with him across the green. Bill was
waiting for them outside. Her gaze narrowed when she saw him.

“Don’t I know you?” she asked, looking as if her brain were clicking through some mental photo album. She snapped her fingers. “Of course, I do. Didn’t you have that radio station over in the next county? Played nothing but oldies and had a signal that wasn’t worth spit.”

Bill grinned. “I did indeed.”

“You’ve been off the air for a month or so now, though.”

“True.”

She looked from him to Travis. Understanding started to dawn on her face. When Travis opened the door and she stepped inside the studio, her eyes lit up. “Would you look at this,” she exclaimed, her tone awe-struck. “You’re bringing a radio station to Serenity!”

“I am,” Travis confirmed. He studied her worriedly. “What do you think? It’s not quite up there with sex toys and porno.”

“And a darn good thing it’s not,” she said, sitting down in front of one of the microphones. “You going on the air today?”

“Not for another couple of weeks.”

“What kind of music?”

“Country.”

Gesturing to the two microphones. “You planning to invite folks in to talk?”

“Absolutely.”

She nodded. “I might want to give that a try one day,” she admitted, clearly trying not to sound too eager. “Seems like fun.”

“I think you’d be the perfect guest. You could talk about all the changes in downtown Serenity and why Wharton’s has made it through all the economic ups and downs.”

“Or I could tell who’s been misbehaving around town,” she said, her expression mischievous.

Travis laughed. “As long as you don’t land me in a pile of you-know-what and get me slapped with a slander suit.”

She frowned at his joking tone. “Don’t you know by now that I never repeat anything that isn’t gospel truth?”

“Does the mention of sex toys and porno in connection to this place ring any bells?” he inquired.

She waved off his remark. “I only said that because you wouldn’t say what you were doing. When there’s a vacuum, gossip will usually fill it.”

He nodded. “Glad to know how your mind works.”

“Has nothing to do with my mind,” she said huffily. “It’s a fact.”

Travis regarded her with wonder. “Grace, you really are a town treasure.”

“Hush. You make me sound like some statue on the green. I need to get back over to Wharton’s before Sarah goes crazy. Everybody and their brother decided to come in for breakfast this morning before the big announcement.” She grinned at him. “I hate to steal your thunder, but I might have to mention a thing or two about it when I get back there.”