Scrimmage Gone South (Crimson Romance) Read Free

Townshend. You can pretend to be stupid with everyone else. For reasons I cannot fathom, even Harris seems to believe you have no knowledge of football terminology. But just in case you have had a lobotomy that I am unaware of, I will be clear. Keep your hands off my first string quarterback. Seven. Kirby Lawson. Do not touch him. Ever again.”
    Now she was really confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Nathan.”
    “Do not touch him. If you still need for somebody to think you’re the cutest little thing north of a bow on a pig’s tail, go sell yourself somewhere else. I’m sure you’d have plenty of buyers. But it’s not going to be my quarterback.”
    As comprehension finally set in, heat and ice formed in her stomach and radiated outward to her heart, her hands, and finally her tongue. The ice that she always depended on to keep her emotions in check abandoned her.
    “Oh, my
God
! Kirby is a boy. A
child
. He
works
for me. What kind of person do you think I am?”
    Nathan raised his shaking hands in front of him and closed his eyes. “I think,” he said between clenched teeth as he gripped the steering wheel. “I think you are the kind of person who will lie, deceive, and pretend. I think you are the kind of person who will do whatever it takes to get attention. I think you play with people. I think they don’t come much lower than you, Townshend Harris Lee, of the Calhoun County Harrises and Lees.”
    Calm. Cool. She lived by it. “You do know,” she said slowly, giving the ice time to chase the fire away, “that
lie, deceive
, and
pretend
, all mean basically the same thing. You have, therefore, been redundant in your speech.”
    Nathan hit the steering wheel with his fist. “You know plenty about all three.”
    “I was not flirting with that child.”
    “I saw you. I saw you holding his hand, hugging him, and smiling like he was the best thing on Earth — doing whatever it took to make him think you are the most amazing thing to ever priss her expensive ass across a courtroom floor.” Nathan’s voice then turned to a mocking falsetto that might have been funny under different circumstances. “‘Kirby, honey, call me if you need anything. Or if you just want to talk. I mean it.’”
    There was anger beneath the frozen calm but Tolly no longer felt it. “What you saw, was me — an adult woman — offering comfort to a devastated boy who has lost the only stable person in his life.”
    “Adult, huh? Is that what you are these days?”
    “You know very well I was not flirting with Kirby.”
    “I am an authority, maybe even
the
authority on what Townshend Lee will and will not do. If there was a journal called
Townshend Harris Lee and her Lying Cheating Scheming Debutante Ways
, they would hire me to be the editor. I would be the keynote speaker at every conference. I would lead panel discussions.”
    “Nathan, I was sixteen years old.” Tolly’s voice was quiet.
    “And therein was the problem, wasn’t it?”
    Tolly picked up her bag from the floorboard. “I’m getting out of this truck, Nathan, and I am going to get in my car and go back to work.” Just to show she was in control, she removed a lipstick from her purse and took her time reapplying it. Then she carefully blotted her mouth with a tissue. “You know very well I have no unsavory intentions toward Kirby. If he thinks well of me, it’s not because of my scheming ways, as you so eloquently put it. It’s because I’ve been good to him. It’s because I pay him more than it’s worth to put up my Christmas decorations and because I invented a dozen odd jobs last spring so he’d have money for the prom. Your implications are not only insulting but preposterous. Though I wouldn’t expect you to care about either one. If you ever feel the need to have a reasonable conversation with me about our past, I will do that. But I will never again sit still and let you accuse me of something like this.”
    “Stay away