* * *
Cash was suffocating. The restaurant Roxanne Scarbrough had chosen for their luncheon meeting was one of those precious southern tearooms that had sprung up in plantation mansions all over the state, catering to a female clientele who preferred to pretend that William Tecumseh Sherman—or, as he was known around these parts, “that low-down Yankee pyromaniac”—had never set a booted foot in Confederate Georgia. Decorated in shades of peach and mint green, it boasted translucent china, sterling cutlery, glittering crystal, hanging plants and lace-covered windows. He’d been at the tearoom for nearly an hour. During which time Roxanne had pulled out all the stops in her attempt to convince him that he was the only man in Georgia, indeed, on the planet, capable of restoring her antebellum plantation house.
Located just outside Raintree, on the road to Savannah, if the woman could be believed, the mansion was a combination of Twelve Oaks and Tara, with a little Xanadu’s pleasure palace thrown in for good measure. To demonstrate she’d done her homework, she’d also brought along an attaché case of engineering reports, proclaiming the home to be structurally sound.
Roxanne tried tempting him with fame, assuring him that the project would end up featured in yet another of her bestselling books.
“You’ve no idea how many people buy these books,” she stressed over salads of spinach, bay shrimp, watercress and artichoke hearts. There was not a single offering of red meat on the menu. “People with quality who need my guidance when it comes to creating a stylish ambiance.”
She shared a conspiratorial smile. “And just think, when they read that you’re the man I’ve selected to create my dream home, why, your phone will be ringing off the hook.”
There’d been a time, not so long ago, when Cash might have found the idea enticing. But no longer. Not after his years in San Francisco.
“As attractive an idea as that might be,” he said mildly, “I currently have about as much work as I can handle.” His own smile did not reach his eyes. “Some people, it appears, have heard of me without the media hype.”
“Well, of course they have,” Roxanne said quickly. Switching gears with an alacrity that Cash found impressive, she appealed again to his ego. “But if you were to work for me—”
“With,” he interjected.
She arched a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“If I were to agree to do the job, which I’m not saying I am,” he drawled, “I’d be working with you, not for you. It would be a joint project, based on your vision, but I’d insist on input on all decisions.”
“Oh.” Cash was not all that surprised by the way she managed to frown without causing a single line in her forehead or her lips. Southern women had such frowns down to a science. “I’m not accustomed to collaborating.”
“I can understand that.” He braced both elbows on the table and eyed her over his linked fingers. “However, remodeling a house is not exactly the same as baking petit fours or creating gilded mistletoe Christmas wreaths. It’s a major construction project, often more difficult than the original work. It also requires the art of compromise between architect and home owner.”
“Compromise.” Her sigh caused her breasts to rise and fall beneath the flowered silk dress. Cash watched her mulling the idea over and decided it was not something she was accustomed to doing. “I could live with that,” she decided after a long pause. “So long as I had the last word.”
“Unless it involved structural integrity.” The words were no sooner out of his mouth than he realized she’d obviously take them as encouragement. “Then the decision would be mine.”
“Agreed.” She sat back in the velvet chair and crossed her legs with a satisfied swish of silk on silk. “So, when would you like to look at the house?”
“I haven’t said I’d take the job,” Cash reminded her.
“If you’d just look at Belle Terre, you might be more amenable. It’s horribly run down at the moment. I swear, it looks as if Sherman’s entire army had just finished sacking it. But I’m sure an artistic man such as yourself—” her voice lowered, thickening to molasses
“—will be able to see its true potential.”
She was definitely not a lady accustomed to hearing the word no. Cash had known women a lot like Roxanne Scarbrough in San Francisco, but most of them had been society wives, married to wealthy, usually much older men. Men more interested in making money than paying attention to their blond and bored trophy wives.
Which was where he’d come in. The same women who’d married for money and ended up being corporate widows, were often desperate for male companionship. Being male and available, Cash had done his best to oblige them.
Until one night when he’d been forced to climb out the bedroom window of a Pacific Heights mansion because his current lover’s stockbroker husband had arrived home early.
Shortly after that, realizing he was in danger of becoming a cliché, he’d resigned his partnership at the Montgomery Street firm and returned home to that very same place he’d worked like hell to escape.
Growing up on the wrong side of the tracks, he’d found Raintree creatively and personally stifling. Every conversation began with the opening line, “Who are your people?”
The answer to that had routinely kept him barred from country club dances and fraternity mixers. In a part of the country where family roots tended to predate the Revolution, having a sharecropper for a daddy and a mama who’d come from a Blue Ridge family known primarily for the high quality of their bootleg whiskey, kept him out of the social register.
His daddy had died when Cash was thirteen. Although his mother had done her best to look after them, money had become even harder to come by, which is how he’d ended up doing odd jobs at Fancy’s whorehouse on the outskirts of town.
It was there Cash had received a first-class education on how to sexually please a woman. Such insight had allowed him to coax more than his share of fascinated, daring debs into the backseat of his black Trans Am. The same belles whose fathers would have bolted the door and gotten out the shotgun if they knew a renegade like him was sniffing around their precious baby daughters.
Chelsea Cassidy had been one of those girls. He’d been thinking a lot about her since seeing her on that television program. Oh, Chelsea’s roots were deep in the rocky soil of New England, instead of the rich loam of the South, but she’d grown up pampered and privileged, and sexually repressed. It had, of course, taken no time at all to break down her sexual barriers. But the social parapets had proven a different story. Their entire relationship, if it could have even been called a relationship, had been a clandestine one, consisting of quick, frantic couplings like the one in the broom closet of the country club, or more leisurely lovemaking in his cramped rented room.
But she’d never—not once—allowed herself to be seen in public with her secret lover. And when the time came to choose a lifelong partner, it sounded as if she’d actually ended up with that self-centered prig she’d been unofficially engaged to since childhood.
“Mr. Beaudine?”
Roxanne’s annoyed tone brought Cash back to the subject at hand.
“I’m sorry.” He managed a smile much friendlier than his mood. “I was just thinking about your offer.”
Her eyes swept over his face. “I do hope your expression isn’t a true indication of your thoughts.”
“Not exactly.”
Forcing his mind back to business, Cash reminded himself that he’d always been fascinated by old houses. He loved their architectural individuality—so different from the cookie-cutter homes found in even new multimillion dollar neighborhoods. He was intrigued by their history and believed that, like dowager queens, even the oldest, most lived-in home enjoyed a certain inimitable dignity.