Beneath Southern Skies. Terra Little

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Beneath Southern Skies - Terra Little Mills & Boon Kimani

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He snatched it up again. “Woodberry.”

      “When you said you were coming home today, did you mean today or did you mean next month today?” a deep, gravelly voice asked.

      He rolled his eyes to the roof of the car and took a breath for patience. “I’m driving into town as we speak, Jasper,” he drawled. He rolled to a halt at the stoplight in front of the funeral home that Jasper Holmes owned and tooted his horn loud enough to be heard inside the three-story building. Jasper lived in the bachelor’s apartment on the top floor. “Did you hear that, old man?”

      “That you?”

      “Yep. You need anything while I’m in the area?” If he’d ever had an uncle, which he hadn’t, he probably would’ve been just like Jasper Holmes, Nate thought as he idled at the red light. Growing up, he had never quite cleaved to Jasper the way most of the town’s kids had, seeing him as a surrogate father figure, but the two of them had always had a grudging respect for one another. “Dinner? Your medicine? An ass-kicking in dominoes?”

      Jasper cackled heartily at the thinly veiled but good-natured threat. “You wish, boy. You wish. I might take you up on that tomorrow sometime, though. Right now I’m thinking about putting some ribs in the smoker out back. Hallie Norris called me this morning and said that Elaine Gordon told her that Jessie down at Hayden’s Diner told her that Juanita Valentine’s granddaughter popped up in town the other day. Jessie says she’s been ordering takeout from the diner morning, noon and night, and we both know how Willie Burnett’s cooking can burn a hole in your gut. So I figured I might smoke a few pieces of meat, whip up some potato salad and see if I could talk Lilly Davis into throwing some stuff into a pot and ending up with her version of spaghetti. Figured the least we could do is feed the girl. Juanita was good people. She—”

      Nate hadn’t listened to a word Jasper had said past hearing that Juanita Valentine’s granddaughter was in town. “Wait a minute. Did you just say that Tressie Valentine is in town?”

      “Yeah,” Jasper confirmed. “Been here since the day before yesterday, the way I hear it. She’s staying in Juanita’s house. Well, I guess it’s her house now, but—”

      “Do me a favor and hold up on setting out a buffet, okay? Let me look into some things and I’ll call you back.”

      Nate disconnected the call and made a U-turn on two wheels in the middle of Main Street. Ignoring the blaring horns of drivers who had been suddenly and illegally cut off, he drove back the way he had come. Less than a hundred feet from the Welcome to Mercy, Georgia, sign at the entrance to town and directly across the street from the Greyhound bus station was a one-way road that circled around to the east side of town and opened up to a small cluster of residential streets. The area ran alongside a dense, wooded thatch and, years ago, it had been separated from the rest of the town by wrought-iron gates at each end. The houses inside the gates were the largest in Mercy, rambling three- and four-story structures that only the handful of wealthy residents in Mercy could afford to own. Beyond it, up on the hill, was the house that he and all of the other kids in Mercy had fondly referred to as the White House. Before the gates had been taken down, the farthest that he had ventured inside the gates had been to occasionally visit Moira Tobias, the owner of the White House. Now he made a beeline for another house, the one that Tressie Valentine had grown up in with her grandmother.

      Nate skidded to a stop behind the small sedan that was parked in the driveway and hopped out of the Navigator before the machine had fully registered the shift from Drive to Park. It was still shuddering when he took the steps leading to the wraparound front porch two at a time and rang the doorbell.

      Thirty seconds later and no response, he rang the doorbell again. Then again. Still no response. Cursing under his breath, he tried the doorknob. His eyebrows shot up in surprise when it turned easily and the door swung open.

      The first floor was clear, he discovered after checking out each room. Other than stacks of already packed boxes and flattened boxes waiting to be packed scattered everywhere, there was no sign of Tressie. He was wondering if she had gone out somewhere when he heard sounds of movement above his head. Exactly what the source of those sounds was didn’t register with him until he was already on the second floor and approaching the first door to his left—the door to the hall bathroom.

      The shower.

      It was going full blast and she was singing along with the water’s spray. No, that wasn’t quite right. Actually she was singing—horribly—over and above the water’s spray. The sound of her voice scraped across his nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard, spiking his irritation level into orbit. Without stopping to think about what he was doing, he barged into the steamy bathroom and snatched the shower curtain back.

      “What the hell are you doing here?” he bellowed.

      Chapter 2

      She turned just as a blast of cool air slammed into her skin, and then visions of warriors rushing in for battle flashed before her eyes—big, strapping men with bulging muscles, bloodthirsty expressions on their faces, and mighty swords slicing through the air. She saw herself being impaled to death and then buried in a shallow grave deep in the woods, where no one would ever find her. She saw, as plain as day, the likelihood that no one would even bother to look for her because the sad fact was that she wasn’t the most popular person in the world and she had no real friends to speak of. Every questionable deed that she’d ever done played before her eyes like a movie. Her killer would go unpunished and her death would be in vain. The public would probably celebrate once her true identity was revealed. They would—

      Oh, God. She was going to die.

      Partially blinded by soap bubbles and completely on the verge of hysteria, Tressie opened her mouth and did the only thing she could think to do under the circumstances. She screamed at the top of her lungs.

      It seemed like an eternity, but it really took only a few seconds to wipe the soap bubbles from her eyes and focus. When she did, the first thing she saw through the steam was a pair of gorgeous hazel eyes staring into hers. Expanding her gaze to a wide-screen view, she took in a pair of perfectly shaped lips and a dimpled chin, thick eyebrows and smooth pecan-brown skin. Something in her brain eventually clicked and she recognized Nate Woodberry, but that didn’t stop her from continuing to scream like a banshee. The only difference was that this time the sounds she made were intelligible. “What the hell,” she shrieked frantically as she snatched the shower curtain from his grasp and wrapped it around her body, “are you doing in here?”

      “I rang the bell. You didn’t answer.” He was the epitome of calm.

      “So you just walk right on in and make yourself at home?” She slung her wet hair back and out of her face and shut off the water. “Idiot! Hand me a towel from over there, would you?” She snatched the towel he handed her and only released her death grip on the shower curtain long enough to make the trade. The fact that he had undoubtedly seen more of her naked body in the past thirty seconds than her doctor had in years burned her skin to a cherry-red crisp, especially since he hadn’t so much as given it a second glance in all that time. So much for cutting back on sweets and working out like a demon.

      “Well?” they said in unison.

      “Well, what?” they said in harmony again.

      And then again in unison, “What are you doing here?”

      “You first,” Tressie said, securing the knot in her towel and stepping out of the old-fashioned claw-foot tub.

      “No,

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