Текст книги "Spring Fever"

Автор книги: Mary Kay Andrews

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

21

When he was eight years old, he and his friend Stevie Heckart stole a package of firecrackers and a box of kitchen matches from Stevie’s older brother. They rode their bikes out to Hideaway Lake and took the firecrackers out onto the dock. It was winter and nobody was around. For a while they amused themselves by lighting firecrackers and flinging them into the lake. But then boredom set in and they began looking for a bigger thrill, a bigger bang. They found a rusty coffee can full of nails in the tin-roofed boathouse. They dumped out the nails and put an entire package of the firecrackers in the can and lit it. The ensuing explosion left him numb and deaf for several minutes, with only a vibrating ringing in his ears.

That was how Mason felt after hearing that Celia was pregnant. It was as if the words she’d uttered had been spoken from the bottom of a well, through a wall of water.

She grabbed his arm. “Say something, please. Tell me you’re as happy as I am. Because I’m, well, I’m delirious. I’ll finally have a family of my own now.”

Too stunned to speak, he simply stared.

“Mason?” She grabbed his arm and shook it.

“I thought you were on birth control,” he said, when his brain started to thaw.

“I was using birth control,” she said. “The patch. But apparently, sometimes things can happen. Remember that upper-respiratory infection I had this past winter? I took antibiotics? They can counteract birth control. And I guess they did. Because here I am … pregnant!”

“But … when? I mean, we haven’t even really been together … like that, since you started planning the wedding.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. “I know. Which was another reason I was so upset that my plans for last night were ruined. It’s been soooo long. But I promise, I’m going to make it up to you tonight.” She laid her head on his shoulder and looked up at him from beneath her uncannily luxurious eyelashes.

He continued to stare at her. “How long, exactly? I mean, if you know.”

“The ides of March,” she said, snuggling against his chest. “I’m due in December. Just think, a Christmas baby.”

He looked at her carefully. She didn’t look pregnant. She was wearing tight jeans and some kind of stretchy top and her belly was as flat as the palm of his hand. When Pokey was pregnant, she swore you could tell the minute her egg latched onto a sperm. But Celia seemed to be saying she was at least six weeks pregnant and she was no bigger around than a twig. “And you’re sure? I mean, have you seen a doctor or something?”

“Of course I’m sure,” Celia said smoothly. “I took two of those home pregnancy tests. Plus I saw a doctor in Charlotte the last time I was there.”

“Oh,” Mason said. He buried his head in his hands. He got to his feet unsteadily. “Excuse me,” he said, ever the southern gentleman. He hurried into the powder room and closed the door firmly.

“We have to talk,” Mason said, when he finally emerged from the powder room, pale and grim-faced. While he’d been retching, she’d moved into the kitchen, washed her face, and combed her hair. She looked radiant, if that was possible.

“Yes,” Celia said, nodding eagerly. “I agree.”

He went to the liquor cupboard, pulled out a bottle of bourbon, poured three fingers into a water glass, and downed it in one swallow.

Celia had never seen Mason drink this early in the day. She slid onto one of the leather barstools at the kitchen counter. But Mason remained standing, his backbone ramrod straight.

“There’s no easy way to say this,” Mason started. “The thing is, even before, well, the thing with Annajane, I guess I’d started to realize maybe we should rethink getting married.”

One large tear rolled down Celia’s cheek. She turned her head and brushed it away with the back of her hand.

“I’m sorry,” Mason said. His shoulders slumped. “I just don’t love you. I thought I did, but I don’t. You deserve better than that. Marrying me would be the biggest mistake of your life, Celia.”

“But, the baby,” she whispered, fighting back the tears. “Our family…”

He sighed. “I can’t lie. The baby complicates things. You said December?”

Celia nodded.

He looked out the kitchen window. A baby. His own flesh and blood. How could he have been so careless? And not just about that. How could he have let his marriage to Annajane dissolve, without a fight? How could he have let the business deteriorate to the point that it was at risk? How could he get himself engaged to a woman he didn’t really want to marry? Had he been asleep for the past five years? What would his old man think of the way he’d screwed things up?

“I will, of course, take care of you and the baby,” he started to say. “Financially, emotionally, whatever. You’ll never want for anything.”

Celia was uncharacteristically quiet.

“You don’t still want to get married, do you?” he heard himself ask.

She shrugged. “I don’t want to force you to marry me.” She sniffled a little. “But I never thought I’d be an unwed mother!” And then she was crying again. Loud, gasping sobs. He put a hand on her arm, and she shook it off angrily, refusing to be comforted. “Just leave me alone,” she said.

22

Annajane couldn’t sleep. She was haunted by the consequences of her actions. By six that morning, she’d decided on a course of action. She had to go to Shane, tell him what she’d done, and ask for his forgiveness.

She threw some clothes into an overnight bag and text-messaged Davis.

“Won’t be coming in today. Maybe not tomorrow either. Sorry.”

Celia, she thought wryly, would be delighted.

It was a six-hour drive to Atlanta. She welcomed the quiet, the chance to think, the absence of distraction. She watched the sun come up over an emerald-green pasture dotted with horses and an old sway-backed mule and, finally, at eight, gave herself permission to stop at a Bojangles’ north of Greenville, South Carolina, for coffee, a biscuit, and a bathroom break.

The restaurant was busy, with construction workers picking up bags of chicken biscuits, office workers lined up in their cars at the drive-through, and two long tables of elderly men who were obviously members of an unofficial coffee klatch.

Her cell phone rang as she was getting back into her car. She glanced at it warily, praying it wasn’t Mason, grateful it was only his sister, Pokey.

“Hey,” she said.

“Oh my God!” Pokey breathed. “OhmyGodOhmyGod. I can’t believe you did not call me.”

“I was going to,” Annajane said. “But I left at six. I figured you’d probably still be asleep.”

“Left where?” Pokey asked, her voice rising with excitement. “Are you telling me you actually spent the night with him? That is the best news I’ve had in months. Years maybe.”

“Spent the night with who? What are you talking about?” But Annajane had a sinking feeling she knew exactly what her best friend was talking about.

“You. And Mason. Last night. Doing the wild thing out at the farm. In the Chevelle.”

“Oh, no,” Annajane moaned. “This cannot be happening.”

“Oh, yes,” Pokey crowed. “Believe it.”

“Where did you hear it?”

“What’s important is who I didn’t hear it from,” Pokey said. “You! How could you?”

“This is not exactly my finest moment,” Annajane said dully. “How did you hear, anyway? Surely not Mason…”

“My brother? Be serious!” Pokey said, laughing. “Of course I didn’t hear it from him. I did call him right before I called you, but he’s not answering his phone, the jerk.”

“Then who?” Annajane asked, bewildered. Her face was in flames. “It’s only eight o’clock in the morning. How on earth…?”

“Oh, honey,” Pokey drawled dramatically. “It’s gone viral. You know I walk every morning on the high school track at seven with Vera Hardy, and she was just agog over the news. And then on my way home, I stopped to get milk and cereal and juice boxes at Harris Teeter, and Bonnie Kelsey, that bitch, stopped me by the Pop-Tarts and wanted to know what was going on with you two. Don’t worry, though, I played dumb…”

“I’m having a nightmare,” Annajane said.

They heard a faint beeping on the line.

“Oops,” Pokey said. “That’s Pete. I’ll call you back.”

Ten minutes later, she called back. “Pete wants to know if you two could reschedule the wedding before he has to return his tux to the rental place,” Pokey reported. “Save him a hundred bucks.”

“Not funny,” Annajane said. “Did you have to tell him?”

“I didn’t tell him,” Pokey said. “He already knew.”

“How?”

“Kiwanis breakfast meeting,” Pokey said succinctly. “You know those men gossip like a bunch of old biddies.”

“The whole Kiwanis Club knows?” Annajane felt fine beads of perspiration forming on her upper lip and forehead.

“Rotary, too, apparently,” Pokey added. “Pete said Davis called him this morning, about to split a gut over it. Davis told Pete he’s furious at Mason for disgracing the family, if you can believe it. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.”

“Davis knows?” Annajane felt a stabbing pain in her abdomen.

More faint beeps.

“Oh, Lord, that’s Mama,” Pokey said. “I’ve gotta take this. You know if I don’t pick up on the second ring she’ll pout for days and days.”

Please, please, please, Annajane prayed. Please don’t let Sallie have heard. Anything but that. Please.

But apparently the gods were deaf to her pleas.

“Mama knows,” Pokey said, calling back ten minutes later.

“Davis told her?”

“Afraid not,” Pokey said. “She heard it at altar guild this morning.”

“What all did she say?” Annajane asked, dread in her heart.

“Don’t ask,” Pokey said darkly.

“I just don’t understand how this got out so fast, and so far,” Annajane cried. “Mason would never have said anything to anybody, and I for sure didn’t.”

“Well, that’s easy,” Pokey said. “Grady Witherspoon! If you wanted to keep your affair with your ex-husband secret, you should have picked a more private place than the farm.”

“We are not having an affair! It was a kiss. One stinking kiss.”

“That’s not how I heard it,” Pokey said. “Pete said Watson Bates saw Grady at the feed and seed this morning. Watson told Pete he heard the two of you were going at it buck nekkid in the backseat of the Chevelle.”

“It was the front seat!” Annajane objected. “And we were not naked.”

“Were you fully dressed?” Pokey asked.

“None of your business.”

“Half-dressed?”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Annajane said, biting her lip. “The truth doesn’t matter, because all of Passcoe is now firmly convinced I was having sex with Mason Bayless last night. So that’s it. I can never show my face there again. Thank God my loft is already sold. You’re gonna have to finish up my packing for me.”

“Come back from where? You never did tell me where you are right now.”

“I’m going to Atlanta,” Annajane said. “I need to talk to Shane.”

“To tell him it’s over between you?” Pokey said hopefully.

“To confess my sins and ask forgiveness,” Annajane said.

“Bad idea. Terrible idea,” Pokey said. “Clearly, something, even if it wasn’t full-blown, buck-nekkid car sex, is going on between you and my brother. You need to turn around and come back here and get it all sorted out. And then take another ride in the Chevelle to finish off what y’all started last night. Hopefully to a motel or somewhere twenty miles away from the prying eyes of Grady Witherspoon.”

Annajane’s phone beeped again. “I’m gonna let you get this,” she told Pokey. “But please, don’t bother calling me back with any more reports of who said what. I can’t take any more.”

23

Shane’s faded blue Aerostar van was parked in front of the cabin. A beat-up bicycle leaned against the concrete-block foundation, and his yellow lab, Wyley, barked once as she pulled the car under the shade of a huge old dogwood with fading pink blooms.

A minute later, Shane stood on the porch, his face alight with pleasure.

“Hey!” he called, grinning. “Awesome!”

Annajane ran from the car and threw herself into his arms. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered into his neck. “I just had to come to remind myself why.”

“I’m glad,” Shane said, patting her back reassuringly. “Totally.”

He rubbed his cheek on hers, the dark stubble scraping against her skin. He was dressed in rumpled khakis and a faded Doc Watson T-shirt, and his feet were bare.

He pulled back a little. “But I wish you’d called to let me know you were on your way. The place is a wreck. They guys and I have been pulling all-nighters, working on stuff for the tour.”

“Who cares?” Annajane said. Wyley bumped up against her leg, nudging her hand with his muzzle until she relented and leaned down to scratch his ears.

“See? We’re both glad to see you,” Shane said.

He retrieved her overnight bag from the car, and they walked inside arm in arm. The cabin was essentially two rooms: a combined living and dining room with a small kitchen L, and a tiny bedroom with adjoining bath.

It didn’t look like it had been cleaned since the last time Annajane was there a month earlier.

Newspapers and books littered the floor and tabletops. A guitar and a Dobro were leaned up against the soot-blackened brick fireplace, and the leather sofa and matching armchair were coated in a fine layer of yellow dog hair. The coffee table in front of the sofa held an open laptop computer, a cereal box, and an empty plastic milk jug. Music wafted from a pair of enormous old stereo speakers that served as Shane’s end tables.

The tiny kitchen counter and sink held an array of dirty dishes, and the trash can overflowed with beer bottles and pizza boxes.

Annajane wrinkled her nose. “You really do need a woman’s touch.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to see the place like this, but the guys and I have been working on new material,” Shane said. “Wait til you hear.”

He swept the newspapers off the sofa and pulled her down beside him. “We’ve got almost enough material for a new album.” He tapped some keys of the lapboard and turned up the sound.

Banjos and fiddle music and a harmonica and three voices, combined in high harmony, with lyrics about pleasing and sneezing, and summer and bummer.

“Nice,” Annajane said, nodding her head to the beat. “What’s it called?”

Shane beamed. “Ragweed Rag. I mean, this is just kinda the first pass. Corey wants me to finesse the lyrics some. I’m kinda worried about the bass line. What do you think? Too clunky?”

Without waiting for a response, he started the song over again.

“It’s good,” Annajane said. “But you know I don’t know that much about bluegrass…”

“You’ll learn,” he said, squeezing her knee. “Let me play you the song we were working on last night. Okay?”

“Actually,” Annajane said, catching his hand, “there’s something important I need to talk to you about. It’s why I came down here today.”

“Sure,” Shane said, still tapping at the computer’s keyboard. “Hang on just a sec, can you? Corey just IM’ed me. He’s got an idea for the melody for the bridge for one of the new songs.” He grabbed his Dobro and started to strum, nodding and pausing.

She got up and wandered into the kitchen and began putting it to rights without giving it much thought. The space was too tiny for a dishwasher, so she ran a sink full of hot soapy water and scrubbed and rinsed and dried virtually every dish, spoon, or fork Shane owned. When the dishes were dried and put away in the one tiny cupboard, she bagged up the trash and took it outside to the garbage can, which was also overflowing with what looked like a month’s worth of bagged-up trash.

The bedroom was a disaster. A plastic laundry basket erupted with dirty clothing. The bedding was a tangled knot of threadbare sheets with a worn green sleeping bag stretched across them. And frankly, she thought, the place smelled like a swamp.

“Ugh.” She tugged at the window, finally forcing it upward. But the window had no screen, and a fine film of yellow pollen drifted inside. She sneezed but left it open. With a singular motion, she swept all the bed linens into the laundry basket, took them out to the tiny mud porch at the back of the cabin, and unceremoniously dumped everything into the washing machine.

She would not, she decided, be spending the night at the cabin tonight. She would have to find a tactful way to suggest that a night at a nice motel would be just the thing to reignite their romance.

When she’d done all she could in the way of housekeeping, Annajane rejoined him.

Shane was still noodling around on the Dobro, but now he was talking on his cell to one of his bandmates. She recognized that he was in what he liked to call his “groove,” and with a shrug, she found a weather-beaten broom and gave the entire house a thorough sweep.

“You don’t have to do that, baby,” Shane said, glancing up from his playing. He slapped the sofa cushion next to his. “Come sit down. I’ll get that later. Didn’t you say you needed to talk to me about something?”

“Okay,” Annajane said, feeling a lump in the pit of her stomach. Just tell him, she thought. Don’t be a chickenshit. Get the truth out in the open, and everything will be all right.

She sank down onto the sofa and turned to face him. “First off,” she said nervously. “I don’t want there to be any lies between us. Remember when we first started seeing each other, the promise we made to each other?”

“Right,” he said. “No lies. It’s the foundation of our relationship.”

“Okay, well, the thing is, some stuff has come up with Mason.”

“Your ex? Didn’t he just get remarried, like, yesterday?”

She took a deep breath. “He was supposed to get married on Saturday, but his little girl got sick right in the middle of the ceremony, so they had to postpone it.”

“I’m sorry,” Shane said. “Is the kid okay?”

“She had an emergency appendectomy,” Annajane said. “She’ll be fine. Mason, on the other hand, may not be getting remarried after all.”

Shane frowned. “How come?”

“It’s a long story,” Annajane said. “Celia’s all wrong for him, but he’s just figuring that out. Better now than later, I guess, huh?”

“Better now than later,” Shane said, nodding solemnly.

“Uh, well, then we went out for a long drive together last night,” Annajane continued. “And he had a flask of bourbon in his glove box, and I found an old mix tape I made him, from years ago, and I don’t know, it might have been the combination of the bourbon and Journey, but I…”

“Wait!” Shane interrupted. His eyes were aglow. He grabbed up the laptop and started typing like a fiend.

“Better late than never,” he said, humming. “It’s genius! That’s the bridge lyric, the one we’ve been trying to nail down all week!”

Now he grabbed the Dobro and started picking. “Better late than never,” he sang in a high, nasal twang. “You never promised me foreverrrrrr.”

He leaned over and kissed Annajane’s nose. “Keep talking, babe. It’s all golden. You’re my muse. Just tell me what’s on your mind, it’s like you’re opening up my creative floodgates here.”

Annajane started over. “One minute we were listening to Journey, and the next minute, Mason was kissing me, and I was kissing him back…”

“Journey? Seriously?” Shane put down the Dobro and frowned. “I’m starting to question your musical judgement.”

“I like Journey,” Annajane said. “Or I did at the time. But that’s really not the point. The point is, my ex kissed me, and I kissed him back.” She sat back and waited for the realization to hit him.

“I see,” Shane said. His face was solemn. “Did you say you’d been drinking?”

“Bourbon,” Annajane confirmed.

“Alcohol can cloud anybody’s judgment,” Shane said. “Sometimes I have a few brews with the guys and the next thing I know, I’m watching old Guns N’ Roses videos on YouTube and shooting squirrels with a BB gun.”

Annajane reached over and gently took the Dobro from her fiancé.

“I don’t think you get what I’m telling you here, Shane,” she said. “I was alone out in the country with Mason. I willingly went with him. Yes, I was drinking a little bourbon, but to be perfectly honest with you—and I do want to be honest with you—I sort of knew he was going to kiss me before it happened. And I didn’t fight him off. In fact, I enjoyed it.”

“Jesus, Annajane.” His face fell, and she felt as though she’d slapped him.

“I know. I feel horrible,” she said. And she did.

Wyley looked from Shane to Annajane. The dog whined and licked Shane’s hand, and Shane scratched his ears absentmindedly.

He looked down at the floor, and then, with hopefulness, at Annajane. “So, it was an of-the-moment kind of thing, right? Not something you’d do again, right?”

“Not if I was thinking rationally,” Annajane said.

“And when you’re thinking rationally?” Shane asked, taking both her hands in his.

“I know it will never work for Mason and me. There were too many issues when we were married before that never got resolved. I’m done with all that.”

“You’re sure? Really?”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Her pulse was racing, and she could feel her heart hammering in her chest. Finally, fighting back tears, she nodded.

“Okay then,” Shane said. He leaned his forehead and rested it against hers. “You had me worried there for a minute, babe, showing up like that, out of the blue.” He kissed her. “It’s forgotten. Right?”

“Riiigghhht,” she said.

As if, she thought.

“I trust you totally,” he told her. “What we have together, it transcends petty jealousy. In a week, you’ll be down here, we’ll be together, and Mason whatshisname will be ancient history.”

And that’s what she wanted to believe. She would have given anything to believe it. But no matter what she did or where she went, she knew Mason would never be history. Not completely.

He stood up, stretched, and yawned. “Wow, I’ve been so busy, I totally forgot to eat today. So, what’s your plan? Wanna get some lunch or something? We’re meeting over at Rob’s house at two for rehearsal, but there’s still time for us to run up to the sandwich joint at the shopping center and grab something before I take off.”

She was staring at Shane now, who was standing there, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder, so trusting, so willing to forgive what he considered her minor transgression. She thought of the qualities that had drawn her to him the first time they’d met in Holden Beach.

Shane had no inkling it wasn’t cool to call a girl five minutes after she’d driven away from him, and that was part of his charm. He didn’t care about cool. He cared about her. The next time they met, in Roanoke, he’d gone to a supermarket and bought pink roses and had them delivered to her table in the club where he was playing. And the next time he was in North Carolina, he called, and even though he was playing in a bar halfway across the state, he drove the three hours over and back just to take her to dinner before he had to drive back and play a late-night set.

He sent her sweet, funny e-mails, links to his music and the band’s Web site. He started, but never finished, writing a song called “Annajane in the Morning.” The band was a regional success. Shane made enough money to do what he loved to do—making music, hanging with his friends, traveling around in his van with his dog, and then coming home to his little cabin.

The life was enough for him, she thought, and he was blessed that he thought so. The problem was, she saw now, it wouldn’t be enough for her. Shane wanted her, she knew. But he didn’t really need her. His life was just the right size, just as it was.

She’d been spouting off about honesty—both to Mason and Shane. But if she was being really honest with herself, she knew there was a reason she’d resisted moving in here or setting a date for their wedding.

“Annajane?” Shane was standing at the door, his Dobro in his hand. “Ready to go?”

She covertly twisted the plain ring from her left hand and looked around the room one last time.

“Shane?” He turned to her, and when he saw the somber look on her face, his beautiful, sunny smile clouded over, and then disappeared.

“It’s over, isn’t it?” he asked, leaning up against the doorjamb. “You’re never moving in here; we’re never getting married. God. I am so damned dense. That’s what you really came to tell me, wasn’t it?”

“No,” she said, walking toward him. “I mean, I thought I came here to convince myself that you’re what I want. To remind myself how lucky I am to have your love. And I know, I must be the luckiest girl in this state. But as much as I want this to work, I just don’t think it will.”

“We could make it work!” Shane exclaimed. “Once you’re living closer, away from all that drama back in Passcoe, things will be different. We’ll make them different. If you need some time and space, I get that. You can have all of it you want. Just as long as you stay in my life. Okay?” He reached out, took her hand, and kissed it.

“Your ring?” he asked, dropping her hand.

She dug it out of her pocket, put it in his palm, and gently closed his fingers over it. “I messed up my last marriage. Gave up and ran off when things got bad. It was easier to blame him, his mama, my mama, everybody but myself. But now I’ve got to stop running. I’ve got to figure out what I want from life.”

“Mason?” His mouth twisted as he said the name.

“I honestly don’t know,” she said. “He’s got a lot of his own stuff to figure out. Right now, I think I’ll just concentrate on fixing me.”

“You’re fine the way you are,” Shane said.

“No, I’m not,” Annajane said. She picked up her overnight bag and slung it over her shoulder and gave Wyley a final head scratch. “But I’m gonna be.”