Waking Up in Dixie Read Free

and she’d sworn on her drunken father’s grave that she’d never embarrass her own children. So she opened the door and stayed and smiled for Charles’s and Patricia’s sakes, not for Howe’s. But the party was a disaster. She could barely face the Harrises, who responded to her avoidance with confused concern. And Howe deliberately circulated just out of Elizabeth’s reach.
    Elizabeth managed to soldier on till late in the evening, when a drunken Katie Madsden—the wife of one of Howe’s business associates who was nowhere to be seen—draped herself seductively over Howe and started talking about when they’d slept together, in front of everybody who was anybody in Whittington, including Elizabeth.
    Conversations halted abruptly as all eyes turned their way.
    Howe laughed, trying to escape and pass it off as drunken nonsense, but Katie just got louder and lewder.
    Elizabeth’s complexion flamed. Shocked and humiliated, she scanned the room for reactions and got a warning glance and shake of the head from Howe’s mother. God forbid, she should make a scene.
    But what about Howe? The scene was his, in their home! And Elizabeth had every right to react.
    Their guests went brittle with anticipation of what might come next.
    “Tommy,” Howe called to Katie’s husband. “Come get yourwife! She’s had so much to drink, she thinks I’m somebody else.”
    “Oh, no I don’t,” Katie insisted, grabbing Howe’s crotch. “I remember you, mister, and this.”
    An audible gasp escaped the watching guests.
    Elizabeth froze. This was too much. Nameless, faceless whores were one thing, but this woman was local, and anything but discreet.
    She could have killed Howe.
    How could she look the other way when everyone in town had seen this?
    Heart pounding, she grimly approached her husband and his lover, then heard herself say in a low voice that trembled with suppressed rage, “Katie, I’ve never asked a guest to leave my home before, but I’m asking you to, immediately. Get out. You have abused our hospitality and insulted both me and my husband, and you are no longer welcome here.”
    Tommy appeared and grabbed his wife, pulling her toward the door. “Sorry, Howe. She gets crazy when she has too much. It doesn’t mean anything, I swear,” he said to Elizabeth, then repeated for the room, “It doesn’t mean anything, I swear.”
    “Good-bye, Tommy,” Howe said smoothly. “I don’t want to see you or Katie again. Our business relationship is terminated.” Howe put his arm around Elizabeth’s waist. “You’ll hear from my attorneys tomorrow.”
    A wave of sympathy for Elizabeth erupted from the room behind them. To keep from crying, she took a steadying breath and channeled Miss Melly, then turned to their remainingguests. “Some people shouldn’t drink at all,” she said, brows lifted. She motioned toward the buffet and the bar. “Please, everyone, let’s go back to the party and put this little unpleasantness behind us.”
    The tension ebbed as conversation resumed. Elizabeth stood rigid, a forced smile plastered on her face.
    “Well done,” Howe said quietly from just behind her left shoulder.
    Hating him for the first time in all their long, challenging years together, she faced her husband with stone-cold anger. “You owe me for this,” she bit out. “Make it right with the Harrises. Now.”
    He eyed her with renewed admiration. “Done. But only this once.”
    “We’ll see,” she said, then resumed her duties as hostess.
    When she looked for the Harrises, she saw Howe shaking a much-relieved Robert’s hand, and Faith was crying happy tears.
    At least someone here was happy tonight, Elizabeth thought, and bitterly wished herself a Merry Christmas.

Chapter 2
     
    The past: Greenville, Georgia
     
    Eleven-year-old Bessie Mae dragged the scraggly pine sapling she’d cut down in the back door of the abandoned Piggly Wiggly her family had appropriated. Once the tree was safely in, she