Susan Phillips - Ain’t She Sweet?

She’d spent his wedding day in bed with Darren Tharp, trying to numb her grief with bad sex. Not long after, when Griffin was disposing of Diddie’s things, he’d found Sugar Beth’s guilty confession. Within days, everyone had known what she’d done to Colin Byrne, and the people who’d merely disliked her before now hated her. The Seawillows, already hurt by the way she’d abandoned them, had never spoken to her again.

She’d had no chance to reconcile with her father. Right before her final exams, barely three months after his marriage, he’d suffered a fatal heart attack. Only then did she learn that he’d made good on his threat to disinherit her. In the space of five months, she’d lost her mother, her father, her best friends, and Frenchman’s Bride. She’d been too young to understand how many losses were yet to come.

“Is it true that you got married three days after they buried Griffin?” Byrne asked, with no particular display of interest in her answer.

“In my defense, I cried buckets through the ceremony.”

“Touching.”

She pulled the key from her pocket. “It’s been hilarious talking to you, but I need to lock up and get on with my day.”

“Manicure and massage?”

“Later. I have to find a job first.”

One bold, dark eyebrow angled upward. “A job? I’m incredulous.”

“I get bored if I have too much time on my hands.”

“The papers said Emmett Hooper died bankrupt, but I was certain you’d manage to come away with something.”

She thought of Gordon. “Oh, I did.”

He gazed around at the awful interior of the depot, then infuriated her by lifting one corner of his mouth in what she realized was a knife-thin smile. “You really are broke, aren’t you?”

“Only until I find the painting.”

“If you find the painting.”

“I will. You can count on it.” As she brushed past him and headed for the door, she had to force herself not to run. “Sorry you couldn’t stay longer.”

He took his time following her outside, the smile still hanging around the edges of that uncompromising mouth. “Let me make certain I’ve got this right. You’re actually going to have to work to support yourself?”

“I’m very good at it.” She twisted the lock with more force than necessary.

“Planning to wait tables again?”

“It’s honest work.” She headed for the car, trying not to look as if she were making a jailbreak. Just as she got there, he spoke from the steps of the depot.

“If you can’t find a job, come and see me. I might have something.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m going to do that, all right.” She jerked open the door, then spun back to confront him. “Unless you want our range war to get really ugly, you’d better have that chain off my driveway by nightfall.”

And didn’t that just entertain the heck out of him. “A threat, Sugar Beth?”

“You heard me.” She threw herself into the car and peeled off. As she glanced in her rearview mirror, she saw him leaning against the side of his shiny new Lexus, elegant, aloof, amused. Coldhearted bastard.

She stopped at the drugstore to buy a newspaper and met up with Cubby Bowmar at the register. He pocketed the change from a bottle of Gatorade. “Did you see my new van outside, Sugar Beth?”

“Afraid I missed it.”

“Carpet cleaning business is real good right now. Real good.”

He licked his lips and pressed her to join him again for a drink. She barely escaped with what was left of her virtue. Back in her car, she unfolded the paper over the steering wheel and checked the help-wanted ads. She wouldn’t have to work for long, she reminded herself, just until she found the painting. Then she was heading back to Houston.

Nobody needed a waitress, which was just as well, because the idea of serving hamburgers to all the people she’d once lorded it over turned her stomach. She circled three possibilities: a bakery, an insurance agency, and an antique shop, then headed home for a quick shower. A copy of the survey leaned against her front door. She flipped it open and saw that Colin had been right. The driveway belonged to Frenchman’s Bride.

Depressed, she showered, swiped on some mascara and lipstick, twisted her hair up, and slipped into the most conservative outfit she owned, an ancient Chanel skirt and a white T. She added a raspberry pink cardigan, pulled on nylons and a pair of boots, and set off. Since the insurance agency offered the best money, she decided to start there. Unfortunately, she found Laurie Ferguson sitting behind the hiring desk.

Sugar Beth had liked Laurie in school, and she couldn’t remember having done anything particularly despicable to her, but it didn’t take long to figure out Laurie had different memories.

“Why, Sugar Beth Carey, I heard you were back in town, but I never expected to see you here.” Her heavy hair was bright red now instead of brown, and her earrings were too big for her small, sharp features. She tapped an acrylic fingernail painted with a tiny American flag on the top of her desk. “You’re looking for a job. Imagine that.” She took a drag from her cigarette without inviting Sugar Beth to sit. “You have to understand. We can only hire someone who’s really serious about having a career.”

In Sugar Beth’s mind, a general clerical job wasn’t exactly a career, but she smiled. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

“And we need someone permanent. Are you planning to stay in Parrish?”

Sugar Beth had known this was coming, and despite the aversion she’d developed for playing fast and loose with the truth, she was forced to hedge. “You might have heard I have a house here now.”

“So you’re staying?”

The gleam of malice in Laurie’s eyes made Sugar Beth suspect her question had more to do with Laurie’s desire to feed the local gossip mill than to offer Sugar Beth a job. On the other hand, the idea of bossing around Griffin and Diddie’s daughter might hold just enough appeal for Laurie to come through with an offer, and the nearly empty bag of dog food sitting in the carriage house kitchen motivated Sugar Beth to respond politely. “I can’t promise to stay here until I’m dead and buried, but I plan to be around for a while.” For how long was anyone’s guess.

“I see.” Laurie shuffled a few papers, then gave Sugar Beth a smug smile. “You don’t mind taking our proficiency test, do you? I need to make sure you have the minimal skills we require in math and English.”

Sugar Beth could no longer hold her tongue. “I don’t mind at all. I’m especially good in math. But then, you must remember from all the times you copied my algebra homework.”

Thirty seconds later, Sugar Beth was on the sidewalk.

The Crème de la Crème Bakery had been Glendora’s Café when Sugar Beth was growing up. Unfortunately, the new owner needed someone who could do maintenance work as well as bake, and when she handed Sugar Beth a monkey wrench to demonstrate her skills, the gig was pretty much up. Everything rested on the antique shop.

The charming window display at Yesterday’s Treasures included a child’s rocking horse, an old trunk filled with quilts, and a spool-legged chair with a hand-painted pitcher and washbowl. Sugar Beth’s spirits lifted. What a wonderful place to work. Maybe the owner was new to Parrish, like the woman at the bakery, and wouldn’t know Sugar Beth’s reputation.

The old-fashioned bell above the door tinkled, and the soft strains of Bach’s cello suites enveloped her. She inhaled a spicy potpourri along with the pleasantly musty scent of the past. Antique tables gleamed with English china and Irish crystal. The open drawers of a cherry highboy displayed exquisite old linens. An unusual rosewood desk showcased an array of watch fobs, necklaces, and brooches. Everything in the shop was top quality, perfectly arranged, and beautifully tended.

A woman’s voice called out from the back. “I’ll be right with you.”

“Take your time.”

Sugar Beth was admiring a cheery tableau of Victorian hatboxes, silk violets, and handmade reed baskets filled with speckled brown eggs as a woman stepped from the dim depths at the back of the store. Her dark hair fell in a sophisticated cut that ended just above her jawline. She was neatly dressed in pale gray slacks and a matching sweater with a simple strand of exquisitely matched pearls at her neck.

An icy finger crept along Sugar Beth’s spine. Something about those pearls…

The woman smiled. “Hello. How can I-”

And then she stopped. Right where she was, underneath a French chandelier, one foot placed awkwardly in front of the other, the smile frozen on her face.

Sugar Beth would have recognized those eyes anywhere. They were the same shade of crystalline blue that looked back at her from the mirror every morning. Her father’s eyes.

And the eyes of his other daughter.

“If I had a daughter like you, I would be ashamed to own her!” said Mr. Goldhanger, with real feeling.

GEORGETTE HEYER, The Grand Sophy

Old bitterness curdled in Sugar Beth’s stomach. Intelligent men kept their legitimate children separated from their illegitimate ones, but not Griffin Carey. He’d plunked them both in the same town barely three miles apart and, in his utter selfishness, refused to acknowledge how difficult it would be for Sugar Beth and Winnie to go to school together.

He’d gotten two women pregnant within a year-first Diddie, then Sabrina Davis. Diddie kept her head high, expecting him to outgrow his infatuation with a woman she regarded as a mealymouthed nobody. When he hadn’t, she’d chosen to be philosophical. A great woman learns to rise above, Sugar Beth. Let him have his piece of trash. I have Frenchman’s Bride.

Whenever Sugar Beth raged over being forced to go to school with Winnie, Diddie turned uncharacteristically harsh. Nothing’s worse than other people’s pity. You keep your back straight and remember that someday everything he owns will be yours.

But Diddie had been wrong. In the end, he’d changed his will and left everything to Sabrina and Winnie Davis.

The stylish woman standing before her bore little resemblance to the introverted outcast who used to trip over her feet if anyone spoke to her. The old sense of powerlessness crept through Sugar Beth. As a child, she hadn’t been able to control the behavior of any of the adults in her life, so she’d exerted her power in the only way she knew how-over her father’s illegitimate daughter.

Winnie stood motionless near an old pie chest. “What are you doing here?”

She could never say she’d come looking for a job. “I-I saw the shop. I didn’t know it was yours.”

Winnie regained her composure more quickly. “Are you interested in anything special?”

Where had her poise come from? The Winnie Davis Sugar Beth remembered had turned red when anyone spoke to her.

“N-no. I’m just looking.” Sugar Beth heard the stammer in her voice and knew by the flicker of satisfaction in Winnie’s eyes that she’d heard it, too.

“I just got a new shipment in from Atlanta. There are some wonderful old perfume bottles.” She curled her fingers over the strand of perfectly matched pearls at her neck. Sugar Beth stared at the pearls. They looked so-

“I love perfume bottles, don’t you?”

All the blood rushed from her head. Winnie was wearing Diddie’s pearls…

“Whenever I see an old perfume bottle, I always wonder about the woman who owned it.” Her fingers caressed the necklace, the gesture deliberate. Cruel.

Sugar Beth couldn’t do this. She couldn’t stand here and look at Diddie’s pearls around Winnie Davis’s neck.

She turned toward the door, but she moved too quickly and bumped against one of the tables the same way Winnie used to bump against desks at school. A brass candlestick wobbled, then fell and rolled to the edge. She didn’t stop to pick it up.

Dinner’s gonna be nasty tonight, and not just because we’re having steak, which I ree-fuse to eat due to global warming, et cetera, but because of Her. Why can’t she be more like Chelsea’s mom instead of having such a stick up her butt all the time? I’m not anything like her, no matter what Nana Sabrina says. And I’m not a rich bitch, either.

I hate Kelli Willman.

“Gigi, dinner’s ready.”

As her mother called from the bottom of the stairs, Gigi reluctantly closed the spiral notebook that held the secret diary she’d been keeping since last year in seventh grade. She pushed it under her pillow and swung her legs in their baggy corduroys over the side of her bed. She hated her bedroom, which was decorated in this gay Laura Ashley crap her mother luvvved. Gigi wanted to paint the room either black or purple and trade in all the prehistoric antique furniture for some of the awesome stuff she’d seen at Pier One. Since Win-i-fred wouldn’t let her do that, Gigi’d stuck up rock posters everywhere, the nastier the better.