Waking Up in Dixie (5 page)

One, two, three, four . . .

“Do I know you?” Howe asked. “ ’Cause if I don’t, I’d sure like to.”

This time, Elizabeth responded. “Actually, we went to the same high school. I’m here on scholarship.”

His expression warmed. “Ah. Beautiful
and
brilliant. I’m impressed.”

She cocked her head with a skeptical, “Does that line usually work for you with the other girls?”

Howe chuckled. “The other girls I know aren’t usually brilliant, just beautiful, but that doesn’t make for good conversation. I’m not really into creme rinses and the latest shopping news.”

Elizabeth chuckled back.

Howe’s eyes narrowed as he pointed her way. “Wait. Don’t tell me.” He studied her face. “Mason? Morgan? No, that’s not it.”

Elizabeth turned her attention back to her book.

“You were homecoming queen,” Howe announced. “I saw the picture in the paper. And you were head of the Beta Society. National Merit Scholar. Perfect sixteen hundred on your SATs.”

She looked up. “How do you know all that?”

“My mother sends me the local paper every week,” he admitted. “So I can keep up with what’s going on back home,” he said with definite sarcasm, revealing that he wasn’t too anxious to go back there.

Perfect. Neither was she. Elizabeth extended her hand. “Elizabeth Mooney,” she offered.

“Elizabeth. Of course.” Howe shook his head with a grin. “Every girl in town wanted to be you.”

“Every girl in town wanted to
have
you,” she said archly.

His eyes sparked with interest. “Except you.” He slid down till they were facing each other across the table. “Why was that?”

“I didn’t have time for boys,” she said evenly. “I still don’t. I want to have my Ph.D. by twenty-four and go somewhere far, far away from Whittington.”

Howe grinned, melting her insides. “Me, too.” He looked at her with deepened interest. “Don’t you think you could make just a little time for me? We could plan our escape.”

Our
escape . . . Perfect, perfect, perfect. Elizabeth looked him up and down, then relented. “Well, maybe a little. But only a little.”

Smug, he leaned forward. “How about dinner tonight? Anywhere in the city you’d like to go.”

He was so adorable, it was all she could do to keep from jumping him across the table. But she forced herself to look at her math textbook. “Sorry. Test tomorrow.”

“Shhhhh!” somebody hissed from the stacks.

Howe dropped his voice. “This weekend, then,” he said with confidence. “Give me your number.”

“I don’t have one,” she lied, then gathered up her books. “I’ll see you around.”

Howe looked slightly stunned to see her rise to leave. “How will I find you?”

She gave him a seductive look. “If you’re as smart as I think you are, you’ll find a way.”

Then she glided away, heart pounding half out of her chest.

He didn’t follow, but she wasn’t worried. And sure enough, the next day when she came back to her dorm room, it was filled with a dozen vases of red rosebuds, and a single card, asking, “Dinner Friday at Blue Fish? Seven,” with Howe’s phone number.

Elizabeth flopped backward onto her bed, breathing in the scent of the roses, and laughed for joy. At long last, it had begun.

When Howe arrived at the dorm lobby to pick her up Friday night, he had on an expensive navy blazer, white shirt, camel pants, and a tie. Too good-looking to live. And a subtle hint of lime came from his freshly shaven face.

Elizabeth wore a simple skirt she’d made to go with a sweater from Loehmann’s, and fake-crocodile flats. “Hi,” she said. “How did you know I’d go?”

Howe looked smug. “Because I talked to your roommate, and she said Blue Fish was your favorite restaurant.”

“She’s wrong,” Elizabeth said mildly.

Howe’s confident expression fell.

“It’s Bones,” Elizabeth corrected. “There’s nothing like a nice, thick slab of red meat to fortify a girl.” Her slow delivery had Howe hanging on her every word.

He coughed slightly, then stroked his tie. “Okay then. Red meat it is.”

Howe had one of those new radio phones in his BMW convertible, and he called the restaurant to make sure they’d have a table. That done, they settled for the drive.

“So,” he said, “how is it you’ve been in Whittington all this time, and I know so little about you?”

It was an innocent enough question, but the answer was anything but. “I don’t like to talk about myself,” she said without disapproval. “What about you? What’s it like, being the crown prince of Whittington?”

Howe laughed. “Nobody’s ever called me that before,” he said. “At least, not to my face.”

Elizabeth smiled at his good humor. “So, what is it like, being you?”

He cocked a gentle half-smile. “Not nearly as much fun as everybody else seems to think,” he confessed. “For one thing, my parents have been after me forever to come back to Whittington and take over the bank.”

Elizabeth studied him. “And you don’t want to?”

“In a word, no.” He grinned at the traffic ahead of them.

“What would you do instead?”

“I’m going to be a lawyer,” he said with a mixture of pride and defiance, “a damned good one. And I’m going to make a difference, somewhere far from Whittington, Georgia.”

“And marry a deb,” Elizabeth added with a spark of humor.

“God, no. You sound like my mother.”

“Don’t you like debs?” she teased.

“They’re all right, I guess,” he answered. “Just not for me. Society stuff is so boring.” He stopped at a red light. “What about you? What do you want to do?”

“Get my masters in poli sci and become an independent woman of means. And make a difference.” It was most of the truth. She just left out the part about marrying him.

“What? No marriage? No family?” he teased.

She looked away. “Family things have been . . . painful. I’d rather not discuss it.” Maybe she’d tell him someday, but not till they were married, or at least engaged.

Howe turned left into the restaurant driveway and stopped for the valet parking. When he came around to get her out, she looked up into his big, blue eyes and took his hand.

“Do you know how beautiful you are?” he asked, drawing her close to his side once she was on her feet.

“You’re pretty darned good-looking yourself,” she said, lightly elbowing him in the side, then stepping ahead. “C’mon.” She pulled him toward the entrance. “Let’s have some good red meat and talk about sex, religion, and politics.”

Howe was laughing when they came inside. “Whittington,” he told the host as he kept a possessive eye on her.

Magic. This was magic, and Elizabeth could tell it was the same for him.

Her hidden hopes took flight, making her feel free and fun and flirty for the first time she could remember.

All eyes turned their way as the maître d’ led them to a secluded corner booth in the dark, cozy steak house.

When Howe slid into the booth to sit beside her, the air between them was charged with chemistry, but Elizabeth reminded herself to take her time. Their courtship needed to unfold, slowly and gently, till they could trust each other.

So instead of jumping Howe Whittington’s bones at Bones, Elizabeth talked to him about favorite books and movies. They agreed on some and disagreed on others, laughing all the way through their shrimp cocktails. Then they ate steak and talked
about campus life and politics. Then they ate some more and talked of faith and philosophy. He loved a good, fair argument just as much as she did, and soon, she felt as if they’d been friends forever.

Magic.

Then she turned the topic to him, and Howe told her about his childhood sins, sneaking out of the house and escaping to play Tom Sawyer. Rubbing itching powder into his mother’s girdle. (Elizabeth wished she could have been there to see haughty Mrs. Whittington when the powder started working.) And the time Howe “borrowed” their black housekeeper’s baby because he wanted a brother. Mrs. Whittington must have
loved
that one!

Elizabeth listened well and kept the conversation on him, fascinated to finally get a glimpse inside the man she’d longed for all those years. He was just as wonderful as Cathy had said that day she’d first seen him. Honest. Funny. Humble. Kind. Who wouldn’t love a man like that?

They’d demolished half the huge steaks when he admitted, “I always used to wonder if I was popular for myself, or for my money. I still do.”

He was worried about her, her motives. But so frank about it.

Elizabeth took a long swig of her iced water, the only thing she ever drank. Then she placed her hand over his. “Give people some credit, Howe. Your money and your family come with the package and helped make you who you are.” Her eyes met his over the dim little light on the table. “I like who you are very much. I’m sure your friends do, too.”

Howe leaned close to kiss her, but she deftly evaded him by asking softly, “What’s good for dessert here?”

She wanted the magic to last as long as it could, their courtship evolving, slow and easy. She wouldn’t be rushed. And she reminded herself that men want what they can’t have.

For the first time in her life, she was truly happy, and Howe Whittington was the reason why. She would make him happy, too. They’d escape together, for a sparkling new life together. God willing, for the rest of their lives.

The present: Piedmont Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia

It was a stroke, and Howe got worse.

He let out another of those awful laughs in the chopper, but still didn’t regain consciousness. When they reached the hospital, the paramedics whisked him to Trauma One, where the doctors Howe’s mother had summoned were waiting.

In the ordered confusion of the ER, the doctors assured Elizabeth that Howe was getting the best care possible, then banished her to the waiting room, where she struggled to collect herself.

Her heart still hammering from adrenaline, she paced the dark blue carpet, oblivious to the decorated Christmas tree and the minor Sunday afternoon disasters that crowded the waiting room.

There shouldn’t be Christmas decorations in the emergency room. Not when people might be dying.

Howe couldn’t die.

But he might.

Should she call the children?

No. What good would it do at this point? They couldn’t see
him. And he might pull through. No need to frighten them unnecessarily. She’d wait till she had a verdict from the doctors.

Or he died.

In all her fantasies of being respectably free of their empty marriage, she’d never imagined that losing him would even affect her, much less send her into a tailspin, but it did. Now that widowhood stared her in the face, it terrified her. Elizabeth was a wife and mother, part of a couple. She had a place in Whittington as Howe’s wife. Without him, she would lose that place. Elizabeth couldn’t be alone. Not in that huge old house that had never quite felt like her own. Not in the town her husband’s family had controlled for over two centuries. She just couldn’t.

And anyway, Whittington wasn’t big enough for two Whittington widows. Without Howe there to buffer her, his mother would eat Elizabeth alive.

Once, Elizabeth had dreamed of escaping, but now, she raged inside that her mother-in-law had stolen that dream from her and from Howe. And even worse, Elizabeth had let her. Where would she go if she left? What would she do?

Chest tight, she wrapped her arms across it as if to shield herself from what might happen. With every unfocused step, she marked out what she needed to do: don’t panic; think. He’s still alive. Hold on to that. He’s still alive.

Whittington men lived well into their nineties, with all their faculties intact.

Except his father, of course, she reminded herself with a jolt, who simply hadn’t woken up three weeks after his fifty-ninth birthday.

That sat her down, good and proper, a wave of nausea welling through her. She stared unseeing through the automatic glass doors into the ER parking lot, conjuring with crystalline clarity the day they’d gotten the news that Howe’s daddy had died. She might as well have buried her own hopes for happily-ever-after in the casket with him.

Howe’s mother had glommed on to her son, saying he couldn’t leave her alone to run the bank. She’d been so pitiful and so insistent that she’d worn Howe down until he’d abandoned his own dreams for his mother’s sake. His one act of defiance was taking Elizabeth to Baltimore to marry her, then showing up with her at the funeral, his grandmother’s diamond weighting the hand he gripped through the service, his mother’s pent-up outrage colder and more brittle than the three-carat stone.

Howe had leaned on her, then. Shared his sense of loss, his frustration at having to abandon his hopes of practicing law away from his mother’s interference. He’d been so close to Elizabeth. She’d loved him so, believed that their love was strong enough to weather anything.

She hadn’t realized that the Howe who had captured her heart would slowly disappear as he assumed his father’s place.