His Southern Temptation

chapter Ten


“You look like shit.”

Lucky slid into the booth at the Southern Comfort Diner alongside Beck, tucked his sunglasses into the collar of his shirt, and flipped off Jack across the tabletop for stating the obvious.

“Bite me, Jack.”

Lucky caught the eye of his Aunt Dolly, the owner of the diner and Jack’s mom, and signaled for her to bring over his usual breakfast of pancakes, bacon, eggs, home fries, and black coffee. Today he needed the caffeine since he’d lain awake half the night on Beck’s couch, trying not to think about Taylor’s harsh words and Mr. Clean eyeing her across the dance floor. When he’d finally crashed into fitful bouts of dream-filled sleep, the morning alarm had buzzed way too f*cking early.

“So what’s your problem, Mary Sunshine?” Jack smirked over the rim of his coffee cup, his expression one of a man who’d slept soundly next to a warm, willing woman. Being a newlywed had turned his usually taciturn cousin sickeningly cheerful. Lucky was glad he’d left his gun in the truck—in his current mood he just might shoot Jack. He even had the extra bullets he’d taken from Taylor the other night.

Taylor.

Holy hell. She made him crazy. One minute all he could think about was tugging on a little nipple ring with his teeth before traveling lower to see if she tasted as good as he remembered. The next he wanted to wring her neck for putting herself in the sights of a goon for one of the local a*sholes he used to bust as a cop. It had been a long damn night.

“Here you go, darlin’.” The waitress plunked the plates holding his breakfast on the table in front of him, poured a cup of coffee, and placed the carafe in front of him.

“Lucky, you okay?” Beck paused from eating and gave him the doctor/patient once-over.

Screw Beck’s medical degree. He sure as hell wasn’t talking him into another B12 shot. That bitch hurt for a week.

“I’m fine. I didn’t sleep so well.”

“Well, you didn’t get laid,” Jack stated with certainty.

“And you’d know because getting some on a regular basis gives you Magic-8-Ball super powers?” Lucky took a big gulp of coffee. He placed down the cup. “How would you know that?”

“Because you don’t have the look of a guy who’s missing sleep because he was with a woman all night.”

“And what does that look like?”

“It looks like him.” Jack pointed at Beck, who blinked twice before a shit-eating grin split his face. “He either slept with a woman last night or he jumped out of something high and dangerous.”

“Both, actually.” Beck dropped his napkin on his plate, grabbed his coffee cup, and leaned back in the booth like he owned the place. “I met a woman when I went skydiving yesterday. She was here on one of those post-divorce, find-your-inner-goddess-trips and I spent the night with her. Those rooms at the Bellemeade Inn are really nice.”

Lucky shoveled his food in faster, barely tasting the eggs or the coffee that washed them down. If they started talking women he’d lose his mind, or at least the part Taylor hadn’t trashed already. She was his weak link, the one who got away but never let go. The crazy part was that they’d never really been together, done the whole relationship thing. They had never been in sync. At first she’d been too young—he’d barely noticed her except to be slightly embarrassed by her hero worship. Then, at the end of his junior year of college, he’d caught sight of Taylor in her skimpy cheerleading uniform on Main Street and rear-ended the local preacher’s wife.

The joke, it seemed, was on him.

Gone were the braces and the awkward glances, replaced by womanly curves, tempting smiles, and real possibility. Hiding his attraction nearly killed him at times—raging hormones in his early twenties didn’t help—but you didn’t hit on the little sister of your best friend. Especially when she was an innocent and you…weren’t.

A year later, hidden deep in the barn during a lake party, he’d finally given in, peeling off her clothes and making love to her with a passion that scared him shitless. It had also knocked some sense into his lust-addled brain. She could do so much better than the reckless, screwed-up second son of a local farmer who was weeks away from Marine boot camp and the dangerous life of a soldier. Taylor was a good girl in the truest sense of the word, and when he’d touched her, the last thing he’d wanted to be was good.

So he’d left her alone to live her own life. And now he wanted that life to be with him.

Beck started talking again, interrupting his thoughts. “At least the room was nice until I got a call to come bail this a*shole out of jail.”

“I wasn’t arrested, so there was no bail,” Lucky said.

“Wait! What?” Jack asked, his coffee mug hitting the table with a thump.

Lucky explained the events of the night before, only leaving out the part where he groped Taylor in the maintenance closet. Jack’s expression morphed from curious, to mortified, to downright thunderous by the time he explained who Mr. Clean worked for and the look he’d leveled at Taylor.

Jack was the first to speak. “Holy crap. I had no idea Taylor was even here, much less dancing at the Gent on our case.” He skewered Lucky with a look that demanded an explanation. “How the hell did that happen?”

“She’s staying at Elliott House…” Lucky mumbled into his coffee cup, “…with me. I told her about the case and she went and got the job all on her own, and I couldn’t talk her out of it. Fast-forward to last night.”

His announcement was greeted with silence, both men staring at him with a mixture of “this is gonna be good” and “you are so screwed” written on their faces. Jackson and Beck knew his history with Taylor—Teague was clueless, but that was because he still thought his sister was in diapers.

“So, did you sleep with her yet? Again?” Beck asked.

“No.” He cleared his throat, hesitant to share details of Taylor even with his best friends. “Not yet.”

“Why not? She doesn’t want you anymore?” Jack asked.

Lucky pushed his plate away, his appetite suddenly gone.

“No, she wants me.” Wanting wasn’t their problem. “She wants us to have a three-week booty call while she’s here packing up.”

“You should take her up on it. You’re both adults,” Beck said.

“What about Teague?”

“What about him? It’s really none of his business.” Beck shrugged. He’d said this several times before, and Lucky could tell he still didn’t understand his hesitation. Once Taylor had hit eighteen, Beck thought the code of brotherhood that made little sisters off-limits was stupid. Lucky believed his opinion would be different if he had a little sister. “You two have been hooking up plenty over the years.”

“Yeah, but that wasn’t here. Right under his nose.” Lucky knew his logic was flawed, but it did seem different to fool around in Elliott. It was like “Vegas rules” applied to everywhere but here.

“You could tell him,” Jack said.

“Oh sure. I can just see me having that conversation. Teague, old buddy, I know you’re already pissed that she was picked up in a raid at a strip club, but I’m going to sleep with your sister, again and repeatedly, in every way possible and then dump her ass when she goes back to Hawaii.” He’d be lucky to get a two-second head start before he beat the shit out of him. “I’ll just pick out my casket now.”

“I wouldn’t recommend saying it like that, but if you told him you wanted a relationship with her—”

Lucky cut him off. Usually he gave the best advice, but this time he was wrong. “Jack, she doesn’t want that. She’s not staying here and she’s not looking for anything permanent.”

“And you want something permanent? With her, or are you considering the concept in general?” Jack asked.

“Both. I left the military because I was tired of living by the damn gun every single day. The work I did”—he paused, trying to nonverbally communicate what a bunch of classified documents said he couldn’t tell—“didn’t encourage making plans for a future. You understand?” Both his friends nodded, their expressions serious. He wasn’t sure if Beck really understood, but Jack was aware of the unit he was assigned to and what it meant when he went completely dark for periods of time. “But whenever I did think of a future, Taylor always popped in my mind.”

The three of them were silent for a few moments, drinking coffee and lost in their own thoughts.

“I still don’t see the problem.” Beck dug into his pocket for his keys, motioning for Lucky to let him out of the booth, but he stopped when he saw their twin expressions of disbelief. “What? You can’t have sex for the sake of sex?”

“Not with Taylor,” Lucky said in unison with Jack. Good, at least they were in agreement on that score.

“Whatever. You want her. She wants you. You want more, with her. Seems simple to me.”

That was Beck—keep it loose and when things got tough, jump out of an airplane. His friend sighed, frustration oozing out of every word.

Beck shook his head. “Don’t you get it? Sleep with her, remind of her of how good you are together. You’ve got three weeks to convince her there’s more between you and why it’s worth staying in Elliott. Everyone’s a little more receptive after a couple of orgasms.”

Jack spit coffee across the table. “Seriously, how do you get so many women?”

“I’m a doctor and I’m hot. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told.” Beck waggled his eyebrows and dodged the napkin Jack threw in his direction. “We already know she’s into you, Lucky. Just show her the best reasons to stay in Elliott and you’re golden.”

Lucky tossed it around in his brain. Maybe this was the chance to figure them out.

“Don’t tell me you’re actually considering what this goofball said?” Jack’s voice cut through his thoughts.

“Yeah, I think I am.” He had to, because he either had to get her to stay or give her up for good. “I think he’s right. The time for action has arrived.”

Beck stood by the table, jingling his keys in his hand as he contemplated his next topic. Lucky wondered what he could say or ask that would top the last two minutes.

“You going out to the farm?” Beck asked.

“Yeah. I told Dad I’d help him with the repairs.” The words “if he’ll let me” hung in the air between them, Beck understanding what he didn’t say. The tenuous relationship with his father was one of the things he was here to fix, and repairing it was harder than patching the hole in the old barn.

Beck hesitated for a moment, keys jingling at faster pace, the look on his face transparent—he had dirt, but he was wondering if he should spill.

“You wanna tell me something?” Lucky asked. Beck was like a brother to him, and had actually lived out on the farm with the Landons the last two years of high school when his own father went to prison.

“Yeah.” Beck shifted, his glance flicking over to Jack, the plea for help as clear as day. What the hell was going on? “Summerfield Farm Corporation made another offer to your dad for the farm. It’s a good offer and I think he’s considering it.”

Damn it. He’d found out through his high school buddy who worked at the bank that the farm, Promised Land, was seriously upside-down in debt. Mounting costs for equipment, fuel, feed for the horses, and paying for help to work the land had taken their toll. He had the money to pay the arrears and had arranged a loan for the balance with the bank. His father didn’t know it yet, but it looked like he would have to approach him as soon as possible. His father was a proud man, and it wasn’t going to be an easy conversation.

“When did it come in?” Lucky cleared his throat, unwelcome emotion forcing him to clear his throat and televising to everyone how much this news upset him.

“Yesterday. I saw him picking up your mom last night and he’d just received the offer from Teague.”

“Why Teague?”

“He’s the lawyer for Summerfield, or at least his father was before he took off. I thought you knew that.”

“No. I didn’t know,” Lucky said.

“Did you tell your dad that you know about the debt?” Beck asked.

“No. I didn’t want to upset him when I know I want to buy the farm anyway. It’s specifically why I came back to Elliott. Taking this burden off his shoulders is an added bonus.”

“Well, it looks like you need to move fast. It was a good offer.”

Lucky took another gulp of coffee. When he returned his gaze to Beck, he knew he had to say something to relieve the concern he saw there. This wasn’t Beck’s problem to carry around all day. “Thanks for telling me. I’ll talk to Dad about it later.”

With a “see you later” to the both of them, Beck waved at Dolly from the door and left for his shift at the hospital. Lucky watched him walk down Main Street and get into his car, the upbeat of his steps relaying just how right he was with his world. Not for the first time, Lucky admired his ability to shuck the baggage of past mistakes and live in the here and now.

“Other than corporate America trying to steal your birthright and a case of blue balls, you okay?”

Jack’s comment—the a*shole thought he was so funny—banished his musings and brought him back to the cheerful, rumbling bustle of the Southern Comfort. With another flip of the bird, Lucky settled back in the booth, trying his best to push his concern about the farm to the back of his mind for now.

He glanced at his watch, realized he had a few minutes, and decided to bring Jack up to speed on the missing persons case.

“I’m worried about Sarah Morgan. Eddie Wilkes is just big-time enough to be a real problem, and if Sarah was sleeping with him or crossed him, she might be dead.” Jack leaned forward, the spark in his eye demonstrating how much he loved this work. “This isn’t the case I thought it was when I took it on. I should just turn it over to Sheriff Burke and leave it alone.”

“But?” Jack said.

“Mr. Clean, I didn’t like the look he gave Taylor one little bit. My gut tells me Eddie is going to be a problem for her and he has something to do with Sarah being missing.” He looked down at the Formica tabletop, trying to curb the unease burrowing under his skin. When he met Jack’s gaze, he knew he understood exactly what was driving him nuts. “I wanted to get away from this kind of stuff, a*shole criminals, always looking over my shoulder, and now it looks like I’m right back in it.”

They both rose from the table, each throwing a few bills on the table to cover their meal, waving at Dolly as they exited the diner and stepped out into the summer sunshine and the bustle of Main Street. Elliott was waking up, and Lucky knew his dad had been up and moving for a couple of hours. He needed to get out to the farm or his father would have done all the work himself.

“So, what are you going to do?” Jack paused in the middle of the sidewalk, ignoring the busy foot traffic.

“I’m going to have to find Sarah Morgan. And until I do I’ll have to keep Taylor from Eddie and Mr. Clean.”

“Sticking close by Taylor shouldn’t be too much of a hardship for you,” Jack said with a grin. “That is if she still doesn’t want to kill you for embarrassing her in front of Teague.”

“I have a feeling she’s going to make me pay for that.”

“Yes, but you’ll find a way to enjoy it,” Jack said with a laugh. “All right, I’m off to see if I can steal a kiss from my wife in between her appointments.” He slapped Lucky on the shoulder before turning toward Michaela’s office with a look of contentment on his face. Jack had been a happy man since finding “his Kayla” and it was the God’s honest truth that Lucky envied him. It hadn’t been an easy road, but Jack had come out on top and found a peace of mind that Lucky hadn’t known since he was a child.

Home was where you went to find the answers, and a few days ago he thought he knew all of them. Now, Lucky wasn’t sure he even knew the question.