Authors: Tami Hoag
Rhubarb pie at Madame Collette's. A tradition. Memories as bittersweet as the pie. Laurel thought she would have preferred sitting on the veranda at Belle Rivière in the seclusion of the courtyard, but she took a deep breath and unbuckled her seat belt.
Savannah led the way inside, promenading down the aisle along the row of red vinyl booths, hips swaying lazily and drawing the eyes of every male in the place. Laurel tagged after her, hands in the pockets of her baggy shorts, head down, oversize glasses slipping down her nose, seeking no attention, garnering curious looks just the same.
The scents of hot spices and frying fish permeated the air. Overhead fans hung down from the embossed tin ceiling, as they had for nearly eighty years. The same red-on-chrome stools Laurel remembered from her childhood squatted in front of the same long counter with its enormous old dinosaur of a cash register and glass case for displaying pies. The same old patrons sat at the same tables on the same bentwood chairs.
Ruby Jeffcoat was stationed behind the counter, as she always had been, checking the lunch hour receipts, wearing what looked to be the same black-and-white uniform she had always worn. She was still skinny and ornery-looking, hair net neatly smoothing her marcel hairdo, lips painted a shade of red that rivaled the checks in the tablecloths.
Marvella Whatley, looking a little plumper and older than Laurel remembered, was setting tables. There was a fine sprinkling of gray throughout the black frizz of her close-cropped hair. A bright grin lit her dark face as she glanced up from her task.
“Hey, Marvella,” Savannah called, wiggling her fingers at the waitress.
“Hey, Savannah. Hey, Miz Laurel. Where y'at?”
“We've come for rhubarb pie,” Savannah announced, smiling like a cat at the prospect of fresh cream. “Rhubarb pie and Co-Cola.”
At the counter Ruby eyed Savannah's short skirt and long bare legs, and sniffed indignantly, frowning so hard, her mouth bent into the shape of a horseshoe. Marvella just nodded. Nothing much ever bothered Marvella. “Dat's comin' right up, then, ladies. Right out the oven, dat pie. You gonna want some mo' for sho'. M'am Collette, she outdo herself, dat pie.”
The table Savannah finally settled at was in the back, in the screened room, where abandoned plates and glasses indicated they had missed the lunch rush. Out on the bayou, an aluminum bass boat was motoring past with a pair of fishermen coming in from a morning in the swamp. In the reeds along the far bank a heron stood, watching them pass, still as a statue against a backdrop of orange Virginia creeper and coffee weed.
Laurel drew a deep breath that was redolent with the aromas of Madame Collette's cooking and the subtler wild scent of the bottle brown water beyond the screened room, and allowed herself to relax. The day was picture perfect—hot and sunny, the sky now a vibrant bowl of pure blue above the dense growth of trees on the far bank. Oak and willow and hackberry. Palmettos, fronds fanning like long-fingered hands. She had nowhere to go, nothing to do but pass the day looking at the bayou. There were people who would have paid dearly for that privilege.
“We-ell,” Savannah purred as she surveyed the room through the lenses of her Ray-Bans, “if it isn't Bayou Breaux's favorite son, himself.”
Laurel glanced across the room. At the far corner table sat the only other customer—a big, rugged-looking man, his blond hair disheveled in a manner that suggested finger-combing. He might have been fifty. He might have been older. It was difficult to tell. He had the look of an athlete about him—broad shoulders, large hands, a handsome vitality that defied age. He sat hunched over a spiral notebook, glaring down through a pair of old-fashioned round, gold-rimmed spectacles. His expression was fierce in concentration as he scribbled. A tall pitcher of iced tea sat to his left within easy reach, as if he planned on sitting there all day, filling and refilling his glass as he worked. Laurel didn't recognize him, and she turned back to Savannah with a look that said so.
“Conroy Cooper,” Savannah said coolly.
The name she recognized instantly. Conroy Cooper, son of a prominent local family, Pulitzer Prize–winning author. He had grown up in Bayou Breaux, then moved to New York to write critically acclaimed stories about life in the South. Laurel had never seen him in person, nor had she ever read his books. She figured she knew all she needed to about growing up in the South. She had listened to him tell stories on public radio once or twice and remembered not the tales he had told, but his voice. Low and rich and smooth, the voice of old Southern culture. Slow and comforting, it had the power to lull and woo and reassure all at once.
“He moved back here a few months ago,” Savannah explained in a hushed tone of conspiracy.
Her gaze was still directed at Cooper, her expression masked by her sunglasses. She trailed a fingertip up and down the side of the sweating glass of Coke Marvella had brought, a movement that reminded Laurel of a cat twitching its tail in pique.
“His wife has Alzheimer's. He brought her back here from New York and put her in St. Joseph's Rest Home. I hear she doesn't know her head from a hole in the ground.”
“Poor woman,” Laurel murmured.
Savannah made a noise that sounded more like indigestion than agreement.
The pie arrived, steaming hot with vanilla ice cream melting down over the sides to puddle on the plate. Laurel ate hers with relish. Savannah picked and fiddled until the ice cream had completely returned to its liquid state and the pie was a mess of pinkish lumps and crust that resembled wet cardboard.
“Is something wrong?”
She started at the sound of Laurel's voice, dragging her gaze away from Cooper, who had yet to acknowledge her presence. “What?”
“You're not eating your pie. Is something wrong?”
She flashed a brittle smile and fluttered her hands. “Not a bit. My appetite just isn't what I thought it was, that's all.”
“Oh, well . . .” Laurel shot a considering glance at Cooper, huddled over his writing. “I was thinking I would just run up the street to the hardware store. Aunt Caroline needs a new garden hose. You wanna come?”
“No, no, no,” she said hastily. “You go on. I'll meet you at the car. I'm going to have Madame Collette box up one of these pies and take it home for supper.”
Savannah forked up a soggy bite of pie and watched as Laurel ducked through the doorway, leaving her alone with the man who had effortlessly snared her heart and seemed determined to break it.
Anger shimmered through her in a wave of heat, pushing her toward recklessness. She wanted him to look at her. She wanted to see the same kind of hunger in him that she felt every time she saw him, every time she thought of him. She wanted to see the same raw longing burning in his eyes. But he just sat there, writing, oblivious of her, as if she weren't any more important than a table or a chair.
She rose slowly, smoothing her short skirt, her every movement sensuous, sinuous. For all the good it did her. Cooper went on scribbling, head bent, brows drawn, square jaw set.
Slowly she sauntered across the room, stiletto heels clicking on the linoleum floor. She tossed her sunglasses down beside his notebook, and slowly raised the hem of her skirt, inch by inch, revealing smooth, creamy thighs and a thicket of neatly trimmed dark curls at the juncture of those thighs.
Cooper bolted in his chair, dropping his pen and nearly overturning the pitcher of tea at his elbow. “Jesus H. Christ, Savannah!” The words tore from his throat in a rough whisper. He glanced automatically toward the door for witnesses.
“Don't worry, honey,” Savannah purred, sliding the fabric back and forth across her groin. “There's nobody here but us adulterers.”
He reached across the table with the intent of pulling the skirt down to cover her, but she inched away from him and slowly moved around the end of the table, her back to the door.
“Like what you see, Mr. Cooper?” she murmured in a voice like honey, wicked mischief flashing in her pale blue eyes. “It's not on the menu, but I'd give you a taste if you asked me real nice.”
Blowing out a sigh, Cooper sat back and watched as she lowered one knee onto the chair beside his. The initial shock had subsided, and his usual air of calm settled over him as comfortably as the old tattersall shirt he wore. It was Savannah's nature to shock. Overreacting only pushed her to be more outrageous, like a naughty child seeking attention. So he settled himself and looked his fill, knowing he would see anyone intruding on the moment quickly enough to act before they could be caught.
“Maybe later,” he drawled. “Tonight, perhaps.”
She pouted, staring at him from under her lashes. “I don't want to wait that long.”
“But you will. That'll only make it better.”
He reached out again, slowly, casually, and drew his fingertips up a few smooth inches of leg, meaning to tug the skirt down out of her grasp, but she caught his hand and guided it between her thighs.
“Touch me, Coop,” she whispered, leaning against him, pressing her cheek down on top of his head. She wound her right arm around the back of his neck, anchoring his face against her breasts as her hips began to move automatically, rhythmically against his hand. “Please, Coop . . .”
She was hot and silky, her body instantly ready for sex. She moved against him wantonly. Cooper had no doubt that she would have straddled him on the spot if he would have allowed it, without a care as to who might walk in on them. The idea held a strong fantasy appeal, he thought, grimacing, as desire pooled and throbbed. But he wouldn't follow through.
He thought that might be the only thing that set him apart from the sundry other men Savannah had cast her spell over—that he somehow managed to maintain the voice of reason in the face of her overwhelming sexuality, instead of losing himself in it.
“Please, Coop,” Savannah breathed. She traced the tip of her tongue along the rim of his ear, panting slightly as need gathered in a knot in the pit of her belly.
The need swirled around her like a desert wind, heating her skin. She wanted to tear her blouse open and feel his mouth, wet and avid, on her breasts. She wanted to impale herself on his shaft and go wild with the pleasure of it. She wanted . . . wanted . . . wanted . . .
Then he pulled his hand away and stood, disentangling himself from her, and the want congealed into a hard ache of frustration.
“You're such a bastard,” she spat, jerking her skirt down, straightening her top. A strand of hair fell across her face and stuck to her sweat-damp cheek. She tucked it behind her ear.
Cooper pulled his glasses off and began cleaning the steam from them, methodically rubbing the lenses with a clean white handkerchief. He looked at her from under his brows, his gaze as blue as sapphire, as steady as a rock. “I'm a bastard because I won't have sex with you in a public place?”
Savannah sniffed back the threat of tears, furious that he had the power to make her feel shame. “You wouldn't even look at me across the goddamn room! You wouldn't even give me a civil ‘Good afternoon, Miz Chandler.' ”
“I was concentrating,” he said calmly.
He settled his spectacles back in place, folded the handkerchief, and returned it to the hip pocket of his khaki pants. That task accomplished, he gave her a tender look, the corners of his mouth tilting up in a way that was, despite his fifty-eight years, boyish and unbelievably charming. “I'm a sorry excuse for a man if my work can so involve me that I miss one of your entrances, Savannah.”
He reached out a hand and touched her cheek with infinite gentleness. “Forgive me?”
Damn him, she would. That low, cultured drawl wrapped around her like silk. She could have curled up beside him and listened to him talk for a hundred years, glad just to be near him. She sniffed again and looked at him sideways.
“What are you working on? A short story?”
Coop picked up the notebook as she reached for it and closed it, forcing a grin. “Now, darlin', you know how I am about letting anyone read my work. Hell, I don't even let my agent read it until it's done.”
“Is it about me?” The storm clouds gathered and rumbled inside her again. “Or is it about Lady Astor?” she asked petulantly, giving her head a toss as she moved restlessly away from the table.
She paced along the screened wall, oblivious to the shabby pontoon tour boat that was ferrying a load of unsuspecting tourists up the bayou and into the sauna that was the swamp at midafternoon.
“Lady Astor Cooper,” she sneered, planting her hands on her hips. “Patron saint of martyred husbands.”
“Better I martyr myself to my marriage than to my cock.”
“Are you implying that's what I do?” she demanded. “Martyr myself to sex?”
Cooper hissed a breath in through his teeth and made no comment. They were treading on dangerous ground. He had his own theories about Savannah's sexual motives, but it would do no good to share them with her. He could too easily envision her in a rage of hurt and hysteria, wildly lashing out. And he had no desire to hurt her. For all her faults, he had fallen in love with her. Hopeless love in the truest sense.
“Well, I've got news for you, Mr. Cooper,” she said, leaning up into his face, her lovely mouth twisted with bitterness. “I get fucked because I like getting fucked, and if you don't want to do it, then I'll go find someone who will.”
He caught her arms and held her there for a moment as she breathed fury into his face, steaming his glasses all over again. A deep, profound sadness swelled inside him and he frowned. “You make yourself miserable, Savannah,” he murmured.
She shivered inside, trying to shake off the chill of the truth. Coop saw it, damn him. He caught her eyes with that worldly-wise, world-weary, worn blue gaze, and saw he'd struck a nerve. She jerked away from him and grabbed her sunglasses off the table.
“Save your insights for your work, Coop,” she said waspishly. “It's the only place you really let yourself live.” She jammed the Ray-Bans in place and flashed him a mocking smile. “Have a nice day, Mr. Cooper.”
She whirled out of Madame Collette's in a huff and a cloud of Obsession, not bothering to pay the bill. Ruby Jeffcoat knew who she was, the dried-up old bitch. She'd just add it to the tab and tell every third person she saw what a slut Savannah Chandler was, prancing around town in a skirt cut up to her crotch and no bra on.