SO THIS WAS SOUTHWOOD. It was late in the afternoon on the following Friday, when Cinda got her first look at Trey’s hometown. Through the car’s windows, as they motored toward his mother’s house on the other side of the small, quaint town, Cinda noted the passing sights. Decked out in its patriotic Fourth of July bunting, the place looked like a throwback to the nineteen-fifties. Unpaved roads met main streets. A redbrick schoolhouse sat happily closed for the summer. A drive-in hamburger place featured carhops and cars full of teenagers. A bowling alley sat surrounded by cars big enough to be called land yachts. Well-used pickup trucks kept them company.
A brick theater’s old-time marquee advertised a two-year-old romantic comedy now showing on its one screen. They next drove past a soda fountain, then a drugstore, a clothing and furniture resale shop, a farm equipment dealership, a barbershop and of course, a beauty shop. And they had grabbed a soda at the greasy-spoon diner where the town’s men probably gathered every morning for coffee and gossip and politics.
Cinda smiled. She loved it. She was glad she’d convinced Trey that she saw him for himself and that she was here with him. She’d broken free of the shackles of wealth. More than once, she’d felt she was as sheltered and coddled and restricted as any medieval princess in her castle tower. But not here. She was her own woman. Not Richard Cavanaugh’s widow. Not Ruth Cavanaugh of the Long Island Cavanaughs’ daughter-in-law. Here she was…pretending to be Trey Cooper’s wife. Cinda came back to earth with a wry grin. Okay, so she wasn’t exactly her own woman.
“And here’s Main Street,” Trey said, capturing her attention as he made a right turn. “The nerve center of town. City Hall and the rest of the bastions of local government.”
Sure enough, official-looking buildings from another era, perhaps another century, held captive a town square, complete with a cannon at its grassy center. Scattered around under the trees were park benches populated by old-timers. Off to one side resided a bronze statue of what was no doubt a war hero.
Cinda pointed to it. “Trey, that statue there.” She looked over at him. “Didn’t you tell me once that Southwood had no war heroes?”
A teasing light in his blue eyes rewarded her when he flashed her a grin carrying enough sensual wattage to light up a Christmas tree. “We don’t. He’s a borrowed Civil War hero. Belongs to the next town over.”
“Are you pulling my leg?”
“No, but I can if you want me to.” He made a playful feint in her direction, as if to grab her thigh.
Ticklish, Cinda squawked and grabbed his muscled forearm. “You stop that. You’re going to make me wake up Chelsi.”
Still looking devilish, Trey settled back into his driving. “Hey, look there,” he said, pointing ahead.
Cinda saw a big banner strung high up between street lamps on opposites sides of the road. Waving in the slight breeze, it announced the town’s high-school reunion and welcomed all the alumni back to town. To her surprise, Cinda was overcome with a warm but inexplicable feeling of actually coming home. “I like this town. It’s like a Norman Rockwell painting of small-town America.”
Trey’s expression mixed doubt with hope. “You’re just being nice. This is Hicksville, Nowhere, USA.”
“It is not. Quit saying that.” Turning toward her passenger-side window, Cinda smiled a secret smile at the note of boyish pride in his voice that put the lie to his words. This was the same man who’d spent the past hour telling her how much she was going to hate it here and how glad he was that he didn’t live here anymore.
And all of that from the same excited man who had shown up at her house today an hour earlier than their agreed-upon time. He’d calmed down quite a bit, though, after Major Clovis took him aside and told him—to use Trey’s exact words—how the cow ate the cabbage. As near as Cinda could tell, that came close to meaning the same thing as having been read the riot act. Or being threatened with a guillotine.
“You’ll notice this street is actually paved,” Trey observed dryly. “And that, unlike on Elm Street, there are no dogs sitting in the middle of the road licking their, uh, private parts.”
“Hey, I was impressed that you knew the dog’s name and who he belonged to,” Cinda quipped. “Mr. Cheevers’s old mutt named Ed, right?”
“Right.” Again he glanced over at her. “You hate it here, don’t you?”
He wanted so much for her to like Southwood that he didn’t believe her when she said she did. “I don’t hate it here, Trey. In fact, I was just thinking how much I like it. How unlike Atlanta it is.”
“I thought you liked living in Atlanta.”
Cinda shrugged. “I do. But it doesn’t feel like home.” Not like it did here, either.
Trey made a left onto a residential street—Maple Avenue. As Trey drove slowly down it, Cinda caught sight of a few brick homes interspersed with the mostly wood-framed ones. The houses were well-kept, modest, and sported cyclone fences that enclosed grassy backyards.
Gravel driveways were laid out beside each house. Some led to attached single-car garages. Others ended at former garages that had been enclosed at some point for extra room in the house. Shading everything in a friendly manner were tall, leafy oaks and pecan trees. Also scattered in the area were various running, playing children, and a few mothers chatting on the sidewalk amid toddlers and their toys.
Excitement coursed through Cinda. She sat up straighter, thinking this was how life was supposed to be. “Oh, Trey, this is so great. If Chelsi were older, she would love all this.” Cinda turned in her seat as best she could, given the constraints of her seat belt, to see what her daughter was doing. Still sleeping. Cinda again faced forward. “What a great place to grow up. Why did you ever leave here?”
He chuckled as he pulled into a gravel drive that ended at a small wood-frame house surrounded by tall trees and fronted by a neglected flower bed. “Why did I leave? Ask me that again after this weekend.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I mean it, too.” Trey pulled up to the closed gate to the backyard and stopped his red, shiny American-made muscle car. “Here we are. All safe and sound.” Leaving the engine and the air conditioner running, he looked over at her. “So. Let the games begin…Mrs. Cooper.”
Cinda looked around. “Your mother? Where?”
Trey gripped her arm. “Cinda, that’s you. Don’t forget.”
Cinda’s heart thumped with apprehension. “Ohmigod, that’s right. I’m sorry. I’ll get better at this, I swear. I guess it was just being here at your mother’s house that threw me for a second. I’m okay. Really.”
“You sure?”
It was there in his raised eyebrows and doubting look. This whole weekend could blow up in their faces if she didn’t remember her role here. What had she been thinking to agree to such a thing as this? “What are we doing? This is wrong. I mean…look at this.”
By looking down at her hands in her lap, she directed Trey’s gaze there as well. Circling her ring finger was a fake gold wedding band. Once again, in her mind’s eye, she saw Trey’s reddening face earlier when he’d unceremoniously presented it to her and had put a matching cheap band on his own ring finger. “Trey, we can’t do this. You have to think of something else. We’ll be lying to your family and friends. I don’t think I can—”
“Hey,” he said softly. From the corner of her eye, she saw him undo his seat belt and reach out to her. Before she could even hold her breath in anticipation of his touch, he tucked a finger under her chin and turned her head until her gaze met his. A thrill chased through her. The merest touch from him, the briefest of glances, and she was mush, even now.
To her utter surprise, he then leaned over and gently kissed her on the lips. Tiny shocks of electricity skated over Cinda’s lips. She barely had time to close her eyes before Trey pulled back. “I wondered when this reaction was going to set in. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve had second thoughts about all this, too. I think it’s a little late now for backing out, but just say the word, Cinda, and I’ll take you back to Atlanta.”
He gently caressed her cheek and then took his hand away, resting it on his thigh. Cinda stared at his work-roughened, capable hand and wished she had the courage to reach over and take it in hers and guide it back to her cheek and nuzzle it, like a cat would. Exhaling, she said, “No. I promised you I’d do this, and I will. Just call it a case of, I don’t know, new-bride jitters, I guess.”
“I like that. New-bride jitters, huh?” His smile was warm and sympathetic—and sensual.
But then his expression became serious. Cinda held her breath. Trey was giving every appearance that an admission of some sort was coming.
Sure enough, he said, “Cinda, I just…” He glanced at her and then away. “I want you to know—” Again he stopped himself. He ran a hand through his hair, exhaled, and then looked over at her. “You know, I’m a grown man and this shouldn’t be so hard. But what I’m stumbling through trying to tell you is I want you to know that the only reason I asked you to come with me this weekend was…so I could spend time with you.”
Cinda exhaled her relief. She’d had no idea what he might have been about to say. But this was good. Very good. As if to prove it, a jet of desire flitted through her veins, carried by steadily warming blood. She found she had to swallow before she could speak. “I don’t know what to say, except thank you.”
Trey chuckled as if she’d said something funny. “You’re welcome. I didn’t mean to make such a big deal of it. I just wanted you to know. I mean, after you cleared up that do-I-look-like-Richard thing for me, I find I…just want to be with you. And there it is again. All of a sudden, I can’t stop saying it.”
“No one says you have to,” Cinda rushed to assure him. Could his eyes be more blue? That was all she could think about—that and how much she wanted him to kiss her again. He was so wonderful. But then, she had a sobering thought. Their pretense wasn’t only about some sensual game between them. There were consequences for other people as well. “But Trey, what about your ex-girlfriend? That Bobby Sue woman?”
“Jean. Bobby Jean. She doesn’t scare me.”
Finding this topic to be safer, firmer ground, Cinda stood on it. “Well, she ought to, from everything you’ve told me about her.”
“That’s true. But I didn’t tell you everything.”
Cinda’s firm ground felt suddenly soft and marshy. “Oh, I don’t like the sound of that at all. What is she—?” Cinda cast about for the worst thing she could think of. “—the mother of your child?”
“Ha. Hardly. No.”
Thank God. “Then what? Is she in the Mafia?”
Trey didn’t laugh. And then he made it worse. “No. But her estranged husband, one Mr. Rocco Diamante from New Jersey, is reputed to be. Very strongly reputed.”
Cinda’s heart turned to stone. Gone was her excitement for the coming weekend. In its place were anger and a sense of having been set up. “Oh, God, Trey, where there’s smoke there’s fire. Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
Trey shot her a sidelong glance. “Would you have come with me if I’d told you that part?”
“No, Trey, I wouldn’t have. I have a daughter to protect.”
“And I have a wife and a daughter and a mother to protect.”
“A pretend wife and daughter.”
“Okay. Pretend. But three women, at any rate.”
“I can protect myself.”
“All right. I have a baby and my mother—”
“I can take care of my baby, too.”
Trey exhaled loudly. “Fine. I have my mother to protect.”
“I’ll bet she can take care of herself just fine.”
Trey frowned. “Will you leave me someone to protect, please?”
Cinda crossed her arms over her chest. “Fine. Keep your mother. And if I were you, I’d watch my own behind, too.”
“Thanks for the advice. I will.” Then he became explanatory. “Look, Cinda, you have to know that I wouldn’t have brought you and Chelsi here if I’d thought there was the slightest danger. Besides, there’s nothing to say that Bobby Jean’s husband will even show up—”
Cinda’s abrupt move to turn toward him cut off his words. “Trey, two words.” She held up two fingers. “Estranged.” She crooked one finger. “Mafia.” She crooked the other one. She now had a fist. “He’ll show up. Here’s another word—Headlines. I was a reporter. This is a story. He’ll show up and he’ll kill us all.”
“I don’t think so.” Trey stopped the engine and opened his door. “But thank God you’re here to report it, if it does happen. Which it won’t.”
Cinda was right behind him, releasing her seat belt and preparing to exit the car. “How could I report it if I was dead?”
“I don’t know. You’re the one who’s the reporter. But for crying out loud, you won’t be dead.”
“Oh, you can guarantee that?” Assaulted by the summer’s sticky heat, made worse by her escalating anger, Cinda stepped out of the car and opened the back door where Chelsi slept on in her car seat. Cinda leaned over, poking her head and upper body into the car’s interior, thinking to undo and then extract her little girl from the NASA-worthy contraption. But then she realized that Trey hadn’t answered her. She retreated from the car and found him just then coming around to the vehicle’s trunk.
He met her gaze, then hit the remote button on his key chain to pop the trunk lid. “I heard you. And yes I can guarantee that you won’t be dead. Don’t you think I’ve thought this through, Cinda? If the guy shows up—and I still think it’s a big if—I know the police chief. Bubba Mahaffey and I went to high school together.”
Cinda put her hands to her waist. “Bubba Mahaffey? Bubba? Well, there’s a name that will strike terror into a Mafioso’s heart. I think I’d feel better if his name was something like Killer.”
“You obviously haven’t seen Bubba yet.” His mouth pursed, Trey began tossing their luggage out of the trunk and onto the grass.
Two pieces of her top-end designer-label bags went flying by. Mouth agape with outrage, Cinda glared at Trey. “Do you mind not throwing my luggage about? There are things in there that could break.”
Without a word, Trey raised an eyebrow and tossed her makeup kit on top of the sorry heap he’d already made of their weekend things.
This meant war. Cinda eyed him. “Lovely. We’re not here five minutes and we’re already fighting. I knew I shouldn’t have come. Major Clovis told me this would end badly. So did Marta.”
“Oh really? What exactly did Marta have to say?”
Cinda couldn’t quite hold his gaze. “I don’t know. Something rapid-fire in Spanish that required a lot of gestures. She even did that slitting your throat thing with her finger across her neck.”
“You sure she wasn’t talking about Major Clovis?”
“She could have been. I don’t know.” Cinda adopted a defensive posture, crossing her arms over her chest. She stared at her “husband” standing next to the raised trunk lid. With his chambray shirt highlighting his broad shoulders, as well as his blue eyes, Trey Cooper could not have been more handsome, damn him.
Then, suddenly, it was just funny, the two of them standing there in his mother’s front yard and fussing just like they’d been married forever. It was funny and silly. The Mafia? As if. Cinda popped a hand over her mouth, bound and determined not to be the first or the only one to laugh.
But apparently Trey had come to the same conclusions as she had because he chuckled. “I can’t believe this. What were we fighting about?”
“I don’t know. The Mafia, I think.”
“Well, as long as it wasn’t politics or religion.”
“Or sex and kids. Or money or the in-laws.”
The humor fled in Trey. Suddenly he looked a bit sickly.
Without even knowing what was wrong, Cinda caved right along with him. “Oh, no, Trey, what now?”
“I have something else to tell you.”
She put a hand to her forehead. “Dear God. What now?”
He took a deep breath. “Okay. It’s my mother.”
“Your mother? Great. What about her?”
“You made me think of it when you named those things that married couples fight about.”
Married couples. But they weren’t a married couple. Cinda pondered that, then feared she knew where this was going. “Trey, if you tell me that you didn’t tell her the truth here—”
“I did.” He raised a hand to halt her objections. “I told her. Only she doesn’t believe me.”
“She doesn’t—what does that mean?” Cinda’s next thought stiffened her knees. “Are you telling me that she thinks we’re really married?”
He shook his head. “No. She doesn’t just think it. She chooses to believe we’re really married and I just didn’t tell her we were getting married. Or having a baby.”
“What possible reason would you have not to tell her?”
Trey was looking more and more uncomfortable here. “That’s what I told her.”
“And she said…?” Not that Cinda really wanted to know. “Based on your having told her the truth, of course.”
Now he looked defensive. Big, handsome, manly…and little-boy defensive. He couldn’t have been more endearing—if Cinda had been less angry with him, that is.
“I told her,” he said stubbornly. “But she thinks we didn’t tell her because we—you and I—had to get married, if you get my drift.”
Cinda could only stare at him. “We had to get married? Trey, does your mother know how old you are? I mean you’re not a kid. It’s not like you wouldn’t be allowed to go on the senior trip because of an unplanned pregnancy. Besides, it’s not a big deal today anyway…” Cinda stopped herself. “Will you listen to me? Now I’m preaching. None of that relates to us.”
“No it doesn’t. But the important thing here is my mother has it in her head that I’ve made up this cockamamie story—her words—to cover my butt and keep her from getting mad or being hurt.”
There was absolutely nowhere Cinda could go with this. “Well? Did it at least work? Is she mad or hurt now?”
“Yes. She’s both.”
Cinda clapped her hands to her aching head. “I do not believe this. What must your mother think? That you’re ashamed of me? That I’m some kind of…easy woman or something? Someone you don’t love and who trapped you?”
“I don’t think she thinks any of that, Cinda. It’s me she’s mad at, not you. See, she wanted me to marry Bobby Jean.”
Cinda dropped her arms to her sides. “Oh, that’s perfect. It doesn’t get any better than this.”
Trey kept talking as if Cinda hadn’t interrupted him. “But once she meets you, she’ll forget about all that. Which is also part of my plan. But come on, Cinda, she could hardly think you’re easy. Everything about you says class. The way you dress. The way you look, talk, carry yourself. Hell, you scream respectability.”
“So that makes me about as exciting as an old-maid schoolteacher.”
“Man, I am losing here. Big time.”
“No, you’re not,” Cinda said, relenting some. “But you know, Trey, just once I would like to have a mother-in-law—real or pretend—who actually likes me.”
His frown mirrored disbelief. “Richard’s mother doesn’t like you?”
Cinda made a face. “Yeah, I guess she does. Probably even loves me in her own way. But I took her baby from her.”
“No you didn’t. The yaks did. Wait. You mean Chelsi, right?”
“No, I meant Richard. He was her everything, her whole reason for living, despite having a wonderful husband. That’s Papa Rick. A sweetheart of a man. But then Richard married me. And we didn’t really love each other, and she knew it. And then I left and he was killed and then Chelsi—Would you listen to me? You know this story. And I certainly do, too.”
“Hey, Cinda, listen,” Trey said, his expression sympathetic, “it’s going to be okay. I can feel it.”
She smiled but she didn’t believe him. “Good. I’m over it. I really am. So your mother thinks I’m some trashy something you have to keep hidden. Whatever.” She quickly bent over to undo Chelsi from her car seat.
The baby was awake now and chewing on a fist. That meant one thing. She was hungry. In about five minutes she could be screaming.
Cinda believed that she just might join her daughter, too. Especially when the sound of a car turning into the gravel driveway behind Trey’s car could only mean one thing.
Her “mother-in-law” was home.