Sex, Lies & Sweet Tea Page 11

  “It is,” I agreed. “I can’t take any of the credit. My parents keep a small staff to maintain the house and grounds.”

  “Are both of your parents living?”

  “No. My father passed away about five years ago. After that, my mother’s Alzheimer’s accelerated. She’s been at Autumn Valley for a couple of years now.”

  “So you do take care of everything after all.”

  “I suppose,” I agreed, completely taken by her charming way. Her eyes sparkled in the setting sun, reminding me of our first night together at the overlook.

  I walked her through the gardens as the sun was escaping the sky, leaving our empty glasses behind on a table. “The flowers are magnificent. If I had this kind of garden, I might not ever go into the house.”

  “It’s pretty,” I replied, not as enthused.

  “How can you not smile being around all this beauty?”

  “I am smiling. And I promise you, I know beauty when I see it.” Bringing her hand to my face, I kissed the inside of her wrist, and moved to her open palm. Placing her hand through my flexed arm, I felt her grip and lightly stroke the inside of my bicep with her delicate hand. In that moment, I was the most powerful man in the world.

  She was so interested in the grounds, I decided to give her the full tour and take her to the stables. “Mom loved her horses, and rode every day until she just… couldn’t,” I said as we entered the barn.

  “They’re beautiful,” Sam remarked, walking through the stalls, carefully inspecting each horse and mare. “Do you ride?”

  “I’d better if I’m going to keep all of this up. Do you?”

  “I ride horses, shoot skeet—you know, your typical Southern girl. It’s been a little while, but yes, I love it.”

  “I may have to challenge you on the gun range, Miss Samantha. You know FBI agents don’t like to be shown up by a lady with a firearm.”

  “Southern ladies always let their men win, no matter what,” she teased and walked ahead.

  I couldn’t get enough of this woman. She rattled my cage and unnerved me at every turn.

  “You’ll have to come back and we can ride. But not Soldier,” I said, referring to the chestnut stallion in front her.

  “Why not Soldier?” Samantha asked, coming in closer to the horse.

  “The old boy is a little skittish,” I said, joining her in front of his stall. “He’s known to be cranky at times. Soldier was Momma’s favorite. So much so, he’s not really been the same since she left. Be careful.”

  “Okay.” Samantha lovingly stroked the horse’s nose, deliberately defying me.

  I took Soldier’s halter in my hand as a safeguard. “You’re adventurous, aren’t you?”

  “Why? Because I like to ride horses?” she asked as she continued to stroke his muzzle.

  I lowered my voice and moved closer to her ear, breathing into her neck. “Because you do whatever you want, Samantha Peterson. I think you might be a rule breaker.”

  She carefully pulled away from Soldier and turned to face me. I placed my hand in the small of her back and molded her to my body, longing to be close to her. She coyly dropped her chin as our bodies connected and I kissed her forehead softly. Her scent wafted through me as she looked up and smiled.

  In that moment, I knew. I knew how much trouble I was in. I took her hand in mine and led her out of the barn. “Are you getting hungry?” I asked, not taking my eyes off of her.

  “Sure.” Samantha beamed, acknowledging the unspoken chemistry between us.

  “Allow me to escort you to our table.” We walked hand in hand through the stables and back to the garden. Celia had the staff light the torches along the path to keep the bugs to a minimum. It also made for a pretty amazing stroll through the gardens, as the sun had finally set.

  “Did you light these for me?”

  “I didn’t want you to get carried away by a big Alabama mosquito during dinner.”

  She stifled a giggle.

  “It does make for a nice path to our table,” I said, giving her hand a squeeze.

  We turned the corner of the garden, revealing the path to the main gazebo. It was lit with tiny white lights and filled with pink vining flowers that entwined the entire dome. In the center was a heavily candlelit table complete with formal place settings, crystal glasses and an overwhelming flower arrangement of nothing but lilacs.

  “After you.” I nodded my head in the direction of the marble steps that lead to our dinner, urging her on.

  “It’s absolutely gorgeous.”

  “No. You are absolutely gorgeous.”

  She smiled at my comment as I seated her.

  I settled in across the table and finally exhaled. “We’ve prepared a lovely dinner selection for you this evening, Miss Samantha.”

  “Mac,” she groaned in half-hearted protest. “This is too much.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked flippantly, conceding the point with a sly smile. “It’s just dinner.”

  “This isn’t just dinner,” Samantha said, raising an eyebrow. “Do you do this for every woman you bring to Lone Oak?”

  “Okay. So maybe it is more than dinner. But you aren’t just anyone. And to answer your question completely, I’ve never brought a woman to Lone Oak.” I let my confession linger in the night air and took a sip of water. “Until tonight.”

  She was stunning, her face lit only by the candles. She stared at me, and I felt as if she saw the parts of me I shared with no one, the parts of me I rarely acknowledged. She was deep in my head, and I wanted her there.

  “Thank you.” Samantha drew out the word in a sweet Southern drawl.

  “For what?”

  “For tonight.”

  “You should wait until the evening is over. I still have lots of time to cock it up.” I knew myself all too well.

  “No, Mac, thank you,” she whispered.

  “You’re welcome.” A small shiver came over me. When she said my name, I could barely control myself. I wanted to reach across the table and kiss her so passionately she’d forget any man who came before me.

  “Good evening, Miss Peterson,” Randall announced. He broke my train of thought, but not the gaze I held on Sam. “My name is Randall.”

  “Good evening, Randall,” Sam replied.

  Randall, one of my parent’s house staff, came to Lone Oak for the night at Miss Celia’s request. He was there to serve the amazing dinner Miss Celia had prepared. He promptly refilled our water glasses, and brought us the wine I’d handpicked from the cellar—Montrachet 1973.

  Tonight Randall was merely serving dinner, but his strong physique easily complemented his deft ability as a bodyguard. He’d trained for the local police force, but didn’t pass the written test. Still, he was one of the best I’d ever worked with.

  “Tonight we are going to begin with a scallop ceviche and avocado timbale, followed by a grilled peach salad with watercress and orange citrus emulsion. Then, Miss Celia has prepared a chicken roulade with Vidalia spinach and wild rice. Finally, we will end the evening with a chocolate soufflé, topped with Grand Marnier cream.”

  Sam’s face lit up as Randall explained each course of our dinner. She was so beautiful and soft. A welcome change from the hard-hitting Northern women I’d gotten used to. Those women seemed to have lost their feminine edge in the rough city—the one tool all females possess to render a man helpless.

  “It sounds wonderful. What do you think, Mac?”

  I stared at Samantha, oblivious to the menu. “I’m sure whatever Miss Celia has prepared will be perfect, thank you.” I could see Randall smile from the corner of my eye. He nodded and exited quietly.

  I held my wine glass in the air. “May I make a toast?”

  “Of course.” She smiled and lifted her glass, her face beaming in the candlelight.

  “Here’s to coming home. To Alabama and Lone Oak, friends, old and new.” I paused and stared into her deep blue eyes. “Here’s to coming home to you, Samantha.”


  She blushed, but still maintained eye contact as the crystal glasses made a perfect ring, clearly buying into the tradition that it was bad luck not to do so. Personally, I wanted all the luck I could muster tonight.

  “So, Sam,” I began. “You mentioned there was a lot I didn’t know about you. I’d love to know everything.”

  She took a sip of her wine and swallowed hard. “My grandmother, Marilyn Peterson, is a resident at Autumn Valley. Mimi is ninety-eight and she’s always been my mentor and savior.”

  “And your parents?” I asked as the first course was served.

  “They are both retired physicians,” she replied. “They travel the world a lot. They have lots of charitable organizations they work with and for.”

  “I think my parents knew them,” I said. Social circles were small in Shadeland, and everyone knew everyone else.

  “I’m sure their paths crossed at one point or another,” she agreed, trying a scallop and making an mmmmm sound in approval.

  “But you didn’t grow up here.”

  “Not really.” Samantha delicately dabbed her mouth with the napkin. “I was in boarding school most of my life. My parents weren’t really into the child-rearing thing. And then I went to Princeton.”

  “Ah, a Jersey Girl,” I said, hoping to get a rise out of her.

  “Not at all.” She frowned at me and laughed. “I’m really quite proud of my Southern roots, and I’ve always been true to them.”

  “Go on,” I said, taking a sip of wine.

  “I majored in journalism and took a job as an executive recruiter right out of college. Mostly because there were no investigative reporter jobs to be had.”

  “I bet you were good at executive recruiting.”

  “I made a nice living, and I didn’t want to leave it and take a poorly paying journalism job. And by that time…” Her voice trailed off and I knew she was on the verge of telling me.

  “By that time what?”

  “Look, Mac. I need to tell you something, and it’s going to be a show stopper. It could ruin the whole evening.”

  She’s going to tell me. “Then don’t.”

  “But you need to know.” Samantha looked into her plate, searching for words.

  “Okay,” I agreed, wiping my mouth with the napkin and giving her my full attention. “Tell me what I need to know.”

  “I was married.” She said the words and took a pause. I remained silent and unaffected. “Three years ago, my husband Daniel was killed in a head-on collision with a dump truck. The truck driver fell asleep and crossed the yellow line, hitting Daniel at sixty miles per hour. He was dead on the scene. I was a twenty-six year old widow.”

  The pain in her voice was breaking my heart and thought maybe I should stop her.

  “But that’s not all,” she continued, using her napkin to blot a small tear.

  I caught the eye of Randall and waved him off as he prepared to serve our second course and waited for her to continue.

  “I was pregnant when Daniel was killed. I was only six weeks pregnant, but pregnant. They put me in the hospital, afraid I would lose the baby. I didn’t. I have a three-year-old son. His name is Dax.”

  There it was. She had given it all to me truthfully, and in its entirety. I couldn’t have asked for more.

  “Sam.” I stood, taking the monogrammed handkerchief from my back pocket.

  Slowly, she lifted her face to me.

  I know, baby. I know everything about you. “Please don’t cry, sweetheart. It’s okay. Eyes as beautiful as yours weren’t meant for tears.” I brushed away a single drop with my handkerchief. “You are every bit the steel magnolia I thought you were. Beautiful on the outside, and a Sherman tank underneath.”

  “You mean you’re not mad I didn’t tell you the other day?” she asked with a tiny sniff.

  “No,” I said, sitting back in my chair. “Of course not. You’ve been through a lot, Sam. I’m not going to hold that kind of past against you.”

  “What kind of past would you hold against me?”

  “A reputation of being extremely friendly with an overabundance of gentlemen.”

  She nodded with understanding. “That’s not me.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said, taking her hand. “Samantha, I think you’re beautiful, funny and smart, and I’d like to get to know you better.”

  “Randall,” I stood and motioned toward the house. “I think it’s time for the grilled pear salad.”

  “You were listening to the dinner courses.”

  I gave her a wink and poured more wine. With the pressure off, we began to talk of Shadeland and how it had changed over the years. She filled me in about her work as a recruiter, and I told her of my many excursions that could’ve and should’ve gotten me kicked out of boarding school when I was young.

  “Were you always away at school? Boarding school and then college—like me?” she asked.

  “For the most part. I did spend part of my college sophomore year here at Lone Oak.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Mumps. Got them fall semester. It was almost an epidemic in Ithaca. By Thanksgiving I was so sick I had to come home. Stayed until after Christmas. Luckily my professors were understanding. I finished the end of the semester online and took my tests when I got back to school in January.”

  “Mumps are pretty serious at that age, what were you? Nineteen, twenty?”

  “Yes,” I said with a nod. “Although I was more upset at the time that I was missing all the fall house parties.”

  “I’m glad you came through it okay.”

  “Yeah, well, that depends on how you look at it. But, I was soon up to my old tricks again. My junior year philosophy professor at Cornell could be a real ass—pardon my crassness—so as a class prank we saran-wrapped everything in his lecture hall.”

  “Seriously?”

  “The professor thought it was funny at first, but when he didn’t have any chalk for the board and what chalk he did have had been wrapped airtight, he was less than pleased.”

  “That’s hilarious.” She laughed and I loved watching her light up when she smiled. Samantha was dazzling. Captivating.

  “He was a great guy, and a really talented professor. To this day, I remember one of his lectures. It had a real impact on me.”

  “Really?” she asked. “What was it about?”

  “The Myth of Aristophanes.”

  Sam took a small sip of her wine. “I know it.”

  “Really?”

  “Plato’s Symposium.”

  I nodded in astonishment, watching the candlelight warm her exquisite face.

  “There were three kinds of human beings,” she began. “Males who were decedents of the sun, females who were from the earth, and the androgynous who were from the moon. Each human had two of everything. Four arms and four legs, two identical faces on opposite sides of a head with four ears, and so on.”

  I tilted my head and smiled as I nodded.

  “They threatened the heavens, and so Zeus cut them all into two halves. Apollo turned their heads to make them face toward the injury of being human, which he covered up by pulling their skin together and tying it off—the navel.”

  “You, my darling, are astonishing,” I said, completely overtaken by her beauty and wisdom.

  “Because of this, humans longed for their other half so much they searched for it all over creation. And when they found it, they never let go.”

  “We’re all searching for our other half,” I said.

  “Souls knitted together through time, constantly searching for the other,” Sam replied, not taking her gaze from my eyes.

  The magic of the night hung over us, thick with anticipation. I’d blown into town, stumbled into the girl of my dreams and was face to face with the woman who made me feel like the man I wanted to be. The world seemed to stop as we spoke the same words in a harmonious unison. “Soul mates.”

  We sat in silence, drinking in the beautiful unscripted moment.
I watched the candlelight bounce off her face, knowing she would be my undoing. She was perfect in every way.

  “How did you know that story?”

  “My Gran told it to me when I was a little girl,” said Samantha. “It’s how he described his love for Mimi. Why he couldn’t live without her.”

  “That’s beautiful. And incredible.”

  “He taught me lots of Greek mythology and philosophy.”

  “Samantha Peterson, you become more and more intriguing with each passing minute.” It was true. I’d never met a woman like her.

  We finished the delicious chocolate soufflé Celia had prepared for dessert. I’d waited all night to be close to Samantha, and as I moved my chair around the table to be by her side, I could barely think straight. The sky was fairly clear and the night was lit by a few fleeting stars.

  “The one thing I always missed about Alabama was the stars,” Sam said as she gazed at the sky. “I think you get a better perspective of the universe from a smaller place in the world.”

  “I think that’s very true,” I agreed. “But those stars are quickly getting lost in the clouds moving in.”

  She shivered a bit, and I took off my coat and wrapped it around her shoulders placing my arm around her.

  “Is it too cold?”

  “Not at all. I’m enjoying your company,” she purred softly in my ear. “And the slowly disappearing stars.”

  She snuggled into me, and I kissed the top of her head, allowing my lips to linger.

  “Mac?” she asked, turning her face up to meet me.

  “Yes.”

  “Why the lilacs?”

  “You mean on the table?”

  “Yes. Why lilacs?”

  “Because every time I’m around you I smell them. And because they were on the note you sent me. I thought they might be your favorite.”

  “That is the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me,” she said with a sigh. “My grandmother always says that the beauty of life is in the details. I love that you noticed my details.”

  She had a way of giving a compliment like no one I’d ever met, and I felt like the man I was supposed to be when I was by her side. I kissed her head again, wanting more, but happy to be so close to her. She studied my face and lightly touched my cheek, sending shockwaves through my core. I was strung tighter than an old fiddle, and I longed to be played.