Mr. Write (Sweetwater) (29 page)

She guessed that was why she hadn’t thrown her alarm a single time since she’d been back.

Untangling her legs from beneath the bulk that was Useless, Sarah left her cat prostrate
on the pale blue sheets. For the moment, anyway.  He’d be off like a shot as soon as he heard the water.

Blinking against the harshness of the light in the
tiny bathroom, she slapped a hand over her eyes and reached blindly into the shower.

Then smiled, as from the kitchen, she heard her automatic coffee maker si
gnal that help was on the way.

Not that she needed the caffeine so much this morning. 
She’d been getting her engine… revved pretty regularly over the past week or two. And today, June Darby – President of the Ladies Garden Club – was “dropping by” to have a look at what Sarah had done with Mildred’s gardens. And maybe “taste a little sample” of the kind of fare they served for a full tea.

What June was doing, Sarah mused as she briskly scrubbed herself, rinsed, was giving the Dust Jacket a trial run. 

The Ladies Garden Club had met in the River Room of the Sweetwater Country Club practically since that venerable structure had been erected. Sarah knew this because Allie told her so.  Just as Allie had told her that June Darby’s husband had been caught in flagrante delicto with one of the beverage cart girls in the facilities on the fourteenth hole.

Understandably, June was interested in moving the club’s monthly meeting to a new, less humiliating venue.
 

S
arah turned off the water.  Grabbed a towel.  Stepped over Useless on the way to her tiny closet.

She
pulled out a pretty blue wrap, discarded it.  Considered a floral tea dress, but rejected it as too obvious.

The green
linen shift, she thought. Elegant fabric, classic lines.  And the square neckline kept her cleavage from looking like it was attempting a violent escape.  It had been exorbitantly expensive – for the woman who’d bought it new.  Sarah knew because she’d found it at a secondhand store with the original tags still on. 

She sighed, thinking that this sort of thing had been so much easier in Charleston.  Lord knew the old guard there made Sweet
water society look like provincials with delusions of grandeur.  But Sarah hadn’t had any expectations to overcome, and tongues hadn’t been waiting to wag over any infraction.

She’d
been sorely tempted to let Allie handle this meeting.  Allie had the familiarity, the connection, the manners that had been bred into bone.

But the gardens had become Sarah’s
baby. Just as the Dust Jacket was her brain child. 

S
o she drank her first cup of coffee while she applied understated makeup, tucked her unruly curls into a soft chignon.  Refilled it before setting Useless up with his morning feeding trough.

“Deal with it,” she told him, when he sneered at the measly helping in his bowl.  “You’re on a diet.  I don’t want the vet look
ing at me with scorn the next time she puts you up on a scale.”

Turning her back on
him, Sarah grabbed her mug and sailed out the door.

It didn’t, she told herself, make her pathetic if she
cast a quick glance toward Tucker’s window.  Not even if she paused for a moment, imagining him sprawled naked across twisted sheets.

Not that she knew if he was a sprawler, she admitted with a frown.  Somehow, they’d ended up each sleeping in their own beds
after their… tune-ups.  She got up early, he frequently stayed up late.  Her place was tiny, his was a construction zone inhabited by not one man but two.  It had just seemed more practical to retreat to their individual corners.  And though Sarah prided herself on being a practical woman, it… well honestly, it galled her that she’d been intimately involved with the man for the better half of a month, and she had no idea if he slept on his stomach, or on his side.  If he was a blanket hog, or if he kicked them to the end of the bed in a bunch.  If he snored.  How he looked with bedhead.

No, scratch that.  His hair was nearly always disordered.

Shaking the mood off as both petulant and pointless, Sarah walked around the viburnum hedge, started down the crushed oyster shell path toward the Dust Jacket’s back door.

Then simply stopped.

The light was misty yet, fingers of sun just reaching through the canopy to brush aside the gray veil of dawn.  She stared for a moment, trying to process what her eyes were seeing.  As it finally sank in, Sarah fell back two full steps.  Then stumbled forward on shaking legs.

“No.  No, no, no.”

She ran, sloshing coffee from the cup she didn’t even realize she still carried.
  And then climbed – furious, humiliated, trembling – onto the porch.

Trailer Trash Whore

The black, dripping spray paint defiled a ten-foot section of cheerful yellow wall.

“
Bastard.” 
Beyond frustration, past insult, Sarah hurled the mug against the wall.  Creamy tan coffee mixed with the virulent black.

Sarah s
hook, the breath heaving out of her lungs in despairing gasps.  Until her brain kicked back into gear, and she cast a panicked glance at her watch.

She had
a little over an hour before opening.  Thirty minutes, at best, before Allie arrived.  Being as it was market day, Josie was off buying fresh berries from the local farmers.  She would have already done the baking, stocked the case, prepared the sampler platter of savories, scones and teacakes that Sarah had requested for her meeting.  Which meant Sarah had a very short window to get rid of this obscenity before…

Oh God.  She had to get rid of this obscenity before June Darby
arrived. What a way to convince the woman that the Dust Jacket was an appropriate, tasteful venue for her ladies’ club meeting.  Sure.  A little graffiti, a nice sexual slur ought to do the trick.

“Damn it.  Just hell.”

Paint, Sarah calculated quickly.  Some fast drying, oil-based primer would cover the graffiti like it had never been.

Except she had no fast drying primer.  The hardware store didn’t open un
til nine, and she didn’t have time to drive all the way out to any of the big chains along the highway.

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut, bunching
her hands into fists until the sharp bite of nails nipped at her palms.

She
could sand it.  Noah had left some of his tools in the storage room, and Sarah was pretty sure one of them was a power sander.  She’d simply… obliterate Jonas’s latest calling card.

Damn him. 
Damn
him. 

He’d been
here, right here, on
her
porch, defacing her property.  What gave him the right?  What made him think he was entitled to mess up what she’d worked for?  Just because he didn’t like her?  Because he held her accountable for his brother going to jail?

Bullshit.  That was bullshit.

Rage bubbled up, but worse – far worse – was the sickness that came with it.  Sarah felt… dirty.  Nearly as bad as when Jonas’s brother had felt entitled to attempt to defile
her
.

Well, she wasn’t going to let him get away with it.

Letting the rage propel her, Sarah let
herself in the back door, stormed the storage room.  She tossed boxes out of her way, shifted aside caulk guns, boxes of nails and tubs of putty. When she spied a loosely coiled cord, followed it to where it attached to a power drill, she had to force herself not to hurl the tool as she had the coffee.

Finally,
she found the electric sander.  The sandpaper was slightly worn, but she thought it would do the trick.

She had the
sense to grab an extension cord before she dashed back out to the porch.

SHE
looked like a mad woman.

That was Tucker’s initial thought
when he peered blearily out the window. Anyone who would stand outside at – he squinted at the clock – too damn early in the morning, wearing a fancy dress and heels while aggressively running a power sander against their siding was…

“Shit.” 
Tucker ran a hand over his stubbled face, blinked his eyes to clear them.  And decided that the words dancing in front of his eyes were really there.

Grabbing a pair of jeans on the fly, he yanked them on
, jogged down the stairs, leaving the door standing open in his wake.  Ignoring the pinch of pine needles against his bare feet, he crossed his property quickly. 

He stopped at the bottom of
The Dust Jacket’s porch stairs, reading what he hadn’t quite been able to make out from his window.

And felt his blood begin to boil.

She’d nearly erased part of the first word, but he was able to make out the sentiment easily enough.

“Sarah.”

She either couldn’t hear him over the sound of the sander, or she was too engrossed to bother looking around.  Tucker climbed the porch, laid a hand on her shoulder.

And jumped back when she whirled, used the sander like a boxing glove.

“Jesus, Red.  You got a license to handle that thing?”

“Sorry.  Sorry.” She switched the sander off, pushed at a
thick lock of hair that had escaped when she turned around. “You startled me.”

“I can see that.”
  Her face was pale, the light dusting of freckles on her nose standing out like cinnamon on cream.  Until he glanced over her shoulder, studied the nasty words, and her cheeks went violently pink. 

Any stray thought he’d entertained about this being the work of teenagers bent on hell-raising was effectively dismissed. 
“As a mission statement, I think I like the sign over the front door a little better.  Although this one does have a certain ring.”

S
he flipped the sander back on.  “Look, I don’t mean to be rude,” she told him over the noise.  “But I have to get this off here before we open.”

With that, she turned her back, started attacking the L
like a woman possessed.

Since his attempt at levity had fallen flat, Tucker tried a different tack. 
“Sarah.” 

She ignored him.  And w
hen he touched her again, she merely shook him off.

With a sigh, Tucker walked over to the outlet and yanked out the cord.

“Hey!”  She stalked over, snarled when she made a grab for the cord and he held it out of her reach.  “I’m sorry if I disturbed your beauty sleep, but that doesn’t give you the right to come over here and –”

“Sarah.” 
He took her by the shoulders, gave her a little shake.  “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m not okay.  You’re an idiot, and you
took
my
cord.”

Her mouth seemed to be working well enough.  “What did the cops say?”

She opened that mouth, closed it. 

Unbelievable. 
“You didn’t call Hawbaker?”

“There’s no point
.”

“For such a smart woman, you’re being incredibly
dumb.”

“Thanks for that
opinion, which I will file under
Who asked you
.  Now give me back the cord.”

He brushed past her,
calmly tilted his head toward the wall.  “This all that was written?”

“What, that’s not enough?  Maybe
you can expand it into novel form.”

Because he knew she was overwrought, Tucker reached for patience.  “What I meant is, is this the only graffiti you found?”

“Yes.”  She pushed at her hair again in agitation.  “I had that cheery thought right after I started sanding.  I checked.  He… they limited their artwork to the back.”

“
Where you were sure to see it first.”

“Or, they realized that they’re far more likely to be spotted
by a passerby out front.”

“Do you think I don’t realize this is Linville’s doing?”

“I…” She glowered at him, then sighed.  “No.”

“Hawbaker needs to see this.”

“What’s Will going to do?”  She spun away from him, turned back.  Threw up her hands.  “There’s no indication, no proof that Jonas did anything.  He might be ignorant, but he isn’t stupid.  Unless he walked into Pinckney’s and bought six cans of spray paint, discussing his intentions to vandalize the store while he paid, I doubt Will can pin this on him.  Will can’t even
find
him.”

“So you’re just going to brush it under the rug?”

“You mean like I did before?”  Temper leaped out of her eyes, green sparks of fury.  “This wasn’t an attempted rape.  It wasn’t a dead animal on my doorstep, or a ruined flower bed.  It was a nasty little slap from a nasty man.  And taking care of it myself is not brushing it under the rug.  I just want to run my damn business without people speculating about what I must have done to be referred to as a
trailer
trash
whore!”