LITMIR.BIZ

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      “Again, I’m not surprised. You always have been a risk-taker, Chelsea.” She put her napkin down onto the table and stood up, prepared to leave. “Just like your father.”

      As before, she did not make it sound like a compliment. Having apologized enough for one day, Chelsea took it as one.

      After a week of uncharacteristic vacillation—during which time she changed her mind at least a dozen times, although she still had misgivings about the proposal—Chelsea decided to take Roxanne Scarbrough up on her offer to visit Raintree, Georgia.

      Since Raintree was too small for its own airfield, Chelsea was required to land in Savannah. From the air, the riverside city looked like an island, surrounded by pine forests and salt marshes. As the plane touched down on the runway, Chelsea, who’d never considered herself at all psychic, started to shake inside, like a tuning fork trembling at a discordant chord.

      As promised, Roxanne’s assistant was waiting for her as she exited the jetway.

      “Hello, Ms. Cassidy,” Dorothy Landis greeted her with a welcoming smile. “It’s good to see you again.”

      “Hi. It’s good to be here.” That wasn’t exactly the truth, but Chelsea was trying to keep an open mind.

      “Ms. Scarbrough is so pleased you decided to take her up on her offer to visit us. She’s personally prepared the guest suite for your arrival.”

      Being forced into meeting with the doyenne of decorating was one thing. Spending even one night under the same roof with the unpleasant woman was decidedly less than appealing.

      “I’d planned to check into a hotel,” Chelsea hedged as they made their way through the passengers crowding the terminal.

      When Mary Lou had assured her all the arrangements had been made, she’d conveniently withheld this vital bit of information. Chelsea decided she and her agent were going to have to have a little chat when she returned to New York.

      The friendliness momentarily disappeared from the assistant’s eyes, leaving behind the hard edge Chelsea had witnessed in the greenroom. “That’s certainly not necessary. Besides, Ms. Scarbrough insists you stay with her.”

      “Then I’m afraid Ms. Scarbrough’s going to be disappointed.”

      Dorothy gave her a long, thoughtful look. Then, apparently recognizing tenacity when she saw it, shrugged her acquiescence.

      “Raintree has a lovely old inn. We’ll stop there on the way to the house.” That matter settled, Roxanne’s assistant turned to more practical concerns. “Let’s retrieve your luggage, then we can be on our way.”

      “We can skip the baggage claim.”

      “Surely you brought more than this single bag. And your—uh—purse.”

      Chelsea almost laughed at the disparaging look Dorothy gave her well-worn leather duffel bag. The same bag her mother had once declared to resemble a pregnant sow. “It’s all I need. Since I’m not going to be here all that long.” Chelsea figured it would probably take twenty-four hours, tops, to confirm that there was no way she would be able to work with Roxanne Scarbrough.

      “Oh, dear.” Dorothy’s pale hazel eyes held little seeds of worry. “Ms. Scarbrough was expecting you to stay at least the week.”

      “It appears this is Ms. Scarbrough’s day for disappointments.”

      Dorothy gave her a judicial sideways glance. “Do you know, I believe we may have misjudged you,” she murmured. “I’m getting the impression that you’re a great deal tougher than you appeared the morning we met in New York.”

      “Unlike your employer, appearing on national television isn’t exactly a normal, everyday occurrence for me.”

      “Ms. Scarbrough certainly has a great deal of media experience,” Dorothy agreed mildly. “In fact, a television crew is in Raintree, taping a documentary on her career.”

      An autobiography and a documentary. Chelsea couldn’t decide whether to be appalled or impressed that the woman whose sole claim to fame was arranging flowers and setting luxurious lifestyle standards no mortal woman could possibly hope to achieve could have been put on such a lofty pop culture pedestal.

      The setting sun stained the sky over Savannah the hue of a ripe plum. The air was perfumed with the scent of flowers and a hint of salt drifting in from the marshes surrounding the city, and the sea, which was twelve miles down the winding Savannah River. The lovely old houses with their great verandas and lacy railings and fences reminded her of New Orleans.

      “This is truly lovely,” Chelsea said as they drove through the city.

      “It is, isn’t it?” Dorothy said. “There’s a local saying that Savannah is a lady who keeps her treasures polished for the pleasure of her guests.

      “The city was originally established in 1733, by James Oglethorpe, to practice agrarian equality. The idea was that the goods the settlers produced would be sent back to enrich the British Empire.

      “He laid the city out in squares, on the Renaissance ideal of balance and proportion. It was the loveliest city in the South. And one of the few that managed to save its grand old homes from General Sherman.

      “You know, of course, that Sherman virtually destroyed Atlanta on that sixty-mile-wide path of destruction to the sea.”

      “Even we native New Yorkers have seen Gone With the Wind,” Chelsea said with a smile.

      “Hollywood couldn’t even begin to describe the horror that no-account Yankee wrought on our people,” Dorothy muttered bitterly, as if the Civil War had just ended yesterday. “By the time he reached Savannah, it was obvious diplomacy was in order. A delegation of businessmen rode out to meet him and offered him one of the finest houses in the city as his headquarters.

      “Fortunately, the general accepted the offer and moved in. Which saved Savannah from the fate of Atlanta.

      “During the 1950s the city fell into decay,” Dorothy continued her travel guide spiel. “Wrecking crews were demolishing the mansions for their handmade Savannah gray bricks to build suburban homes, destroying what Sherman had left standing a hundred years earlier.

      “Finally, civic pride rose to the rescue. And now Savannah’s inner city is one of the largest national historic districts in the nation. The people repolished the lady’s jewels and tourism is booming.”

      They left the city, driving past the mysterious marshlands, along the Savannah River through a backcountry bursting with tropical lushness. Dorothy pointed out fields of tobacco, rice, soybeans and peanuts.

      They’d been driving for about thirty minutes when they came to a small community of unhurried, shady streets. The green-and-white sign at the town limits welcomed visitors to Raintree, Georgia, est. 1758. Population 368. Gateway to the Gold Coast.

      Although Chelsea thought that the slogan might be overstating the town’s importance, she could not fault its beauty.

      The buildings lining the main street were draped in a dreamy embrace of oak and moss, surrounded by an explosion of fiery pink azaleas. White-pillared gas lamps with round white glass globes were beginning to flicker on.

      They passed the commercial center, two blocks of stucco-covered brick buildings with wide awnings that made the town look as if time had stopped there. A pair of old men in bib overalls played checkers in front of a store, as Chelsea suspected old men had been doing in that location since the town was established in the 1750s. In the window, signs advertising a sale on six-packs of Dr Pepper and a new three-day checkout period for the latest videocassettes provided a faintly jarring note to the languorous scene.

      In the heart of the town—surrounded by a wide square of diagonal parking spaces—a courthouse glistened as white as new snow. A carillon of chimes pealed out the hour on the towering clock. It was, Chelsea noted with a glance down at her watch, ten minutes late.

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