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She glanced around the professionally decorated office, seeing it with new eyes, now that she realized the attractive furnishings she’d always admired had undoubtedly been selected by the most vicious mouth in the South.
“You know I never discuss other clients’ earnings,” Mary Lou said mildly.
“I can’t believe you can even stand to be in the same room with that woman.” Chelsea studied the exquisite Ming vase on its ebony pedestal she’d always admired and wondered if it had been purchased with Mary Lou’s fifteen percent of Roxanne Scarbrough’s latest bestselling cookbook, Just Desserts.
“Roxanne is a bit of a challenge from time to time,” Mary Lou admitted with what Chelsea decided had to be the understatement of the millennium. “But she’s garnered the major percentage of the lifestyle market, and her fans love her.”
It crossed Chelsea’s mind that were she to write the truth about the beloved lifestyle maven, all those fans would disappear like Roxanne’s famous beer-battered popcorn shrimp at a Super Bowl party.
Although she’d throw herself off the top of the Empire State Building before admitting it, she’d actually tried the recipe at her last party and earned raves from all the guests. Even Nelson, who considered himself a gourmand, had been impressed.
“Why doesn’t she have her usual cowriter do the book?”
“Glenda Walker is excellent at interpreting Roxanne’s creative vision to the written word. But something like an autobiography is, quite honestly, beyond her talents.”
“You know I don’t want to ghostwrite.” And even if she did, Roxanne Scarbrough would not be on the top of her list of potential subjects.
“Roxanne has already agreed to give you coauthor credit.”
“Which still means she’d get fifty percent of a book I wrote.” Fifty percent less Mary Lou’s agency percentage of both their earnings, Chelsea amended, growing more and more uncomfortable with this entire situation.
“Actually, Roxanne suggested an eighty-twenty split. With you getting the larger share.”
“I don’t get it.” Chelsea blinked. Her fingernails drummed a rapid staccato on the wooden arms of the cream suede chair as she tried to figure out Roxanne Scarbrough’s angle. From what she’d witnessed in the greenroom, generosity was not the woman’s strong point. “What’s the catch?”
Mary Lou frowned. “You and I have a seven-year relationship.” There was an unfamiliar edge to her usually smoothly modulated drawl. “Surely you aren’t implying I’d suggest anything that wouldn’t prove beneficial to your career?”
Chelsea winced inwardly. Terrific career move, insulting your agent. “I’m sorry. Of course I’d never imply any such thing.”
Her recent restlessness made it impossible for her to think while sitting still. She stood up and began to pace, her short pleated skirt swirling around her thighs.
“It’s just that I can’t figure out why Roxanne would want me to work with her on her autobiography.”
“That’s simple. Thanks to the Melanie Tyler interview, you’re currently the hottest young writer in town. She also read your Vanity Fair article and decided that you’re very good at what you do.”
“I suppose I should be flattered,” Chelsea said reluctantly, pausing in front of the Ming vase. It really was lovely.
“This isn’t about flattery. It’s about money. As I told Roxanne, you’re got a helluva career ahead of you. It certainly wouldn’t hurt her to hitch her already successful wagon to your rising star.”
“Even if I were a reincarnation of Truman Capote, why would she be willing to give up such a large portion of potential earnings?”
“That’s simple.” Mary Lou folded her hands on the top of her glossy desk. Her smile reminded Chelsea of a Cheshire cat. “She has this idea—and by the way, I agree—that the book, like her consultant agreement with the Mega-Mart stores, will serve as a marketing tool for all her other projects.”
Eventually making her far more profit than royalties from her autobiography would ever earn, Chelsea considered.
“That makes sense.”
“Although she’s extremely talented, Roxanne’s true genius has always been marketing,” Mary Lou agreed.
In spite of herself, Chelsea was tempted. It certainly would gain her a great deal of international exposure, since Roxanne Scarbrough was a household name all over the world. But still, the idea of working with the unpleasant woman was less than appealing.
On the other hand, eighty percent of a guaranteed bestseller was nothing to sneeze at.
“Her last three books stayed at the top of the Times list for six months,” Mary Lou said.
“The offer is tempting,” Chelsea admitted reluctantly.
“It could catapult you into superstar ranks. Then, of course, there would be the additional audience you’d pick up. An audience that would provide a built-in market for your novel. When you get it finished.”
“Hopefully in this lifetime,” Chelsea muttered. Heaven help her, she could feel herself being drawn to the bait. Which wasn’t all that surprising, since she could probably name five writers off the top of her head who’d push a rival beneath a crosstown bus for the opportunity she was being offered. But still...working with Roxanne Scarbrough?
As much as she liked and respected Mary Lou, Chelsea reminded herself that the agent could be devious. Especially when working to clinch a deal. Refusing to be steamrollered into anything, she lifted her chin in a stubborn angle.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Of course.” Mary Lou sat back in her chair and gave Chelsea a pleased, satisfied smile. “And while you’re thinking, why don’t you get out of this terrible weather?”
“Good idea. Why don’t you call my editor and have her assign me an article about snorkeling in the Bahamas.”
“Actually, I had somewhere closer in mind. Roxanne thought you might want an opportunity to speak with her personally, at her home in Georgia, before coming to a decision. I agreed it was a good idea. She would, of course, pay all your travel expenses.”
Promising to give Mary Lou an answer by the end of the week, Chelsea left the office. As she dashed through the cold rain toward the battered yellow cab the doorman had hailed for her, Chelsea couldn’t deny that the idea of a few days spent lying poolside in a warm southern sun sounded more than a little appealing.
It would also allow her a breather from her recent nonstop schedule. It would force a time-out in her ongoing argument with Nelson. Just the memory of how she’d spent the weekend had her digging in her bag for her roll of antacids.
Despite the French toast—which unsurprisingly, hadn’t turned out nearly as well as when Roxanne had prepared it for Joan Lundon—despite the fact that she’d told him time and time again that she was a print journalist, he’d spent the entire two days pushing the idea of her “branching out” into television.
As she chewed the chalky tablets she seemed to be living on these days, it crossed Chelsea’s mind that the concentration required by ghostwriting Roxanne Scarbrough’s biography could take her mind off her problems.
While giving her a whole set of new ones, Chelsea considered as Roxanne’s furious eyes and pursed lips came to mind.
Raintree
It was the house that cotton built. Constructed in 1837, prior to the Civil War, it was the same Greek Revival style made familiar the world over by the most famous movie ever made about the South. Twenty-two Doric columns—three feet in circumference and forty feet high, Cash estimated—surrounded the two-story house, eight in front, and seven on either side.
“The walls are eighteen inches thick.” Roxanne ran her hand over the exterior facing. “And the bricks were made right here on the property.”
“By slave labor.”
She shot him a surprised, faintly censorious look. “That wasn’t unusual for the time.”
“Unfortunately, you’re right.” Deciding that if he was going to allow political correctness to enter into his business decisions—especially in this part of the country—he’d be broke before the end of the year, Cash put aside his discomfort with how the house had been constructed.
“Your porch is crumbling.” He put a booted foot on one of the boards, crushing it like an eggshell. “It’s about to cave in.”
“So we’ll replace it. Surely that shouldn’t be so difficult.”
“No. But it’s the first thing that will have to be done, or workers won’t be able to get into the place safely.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” She rewarded him with an admiring look. “How clever of you.”
“Not clever. I’m just not wild about the idea of having some plasterer break his neck.”
Before risking the porch, he spent a long time examining the foundation. It appeared to be solid. And the cracks could be easily fixed.
“I realize you’ve already had an engineering report,” he said, looking up at the massive columns. “And the foundation certainly looks secure. But since these are supporting the roof, I’ll want them professionally inspected, as well.”
“I certainly don’t want the roof caving in during my gala open house ball,” she agreed.
He had to give her credit for having a vivid imagination. The place, which was even more of a challenge than he’d expected, reminded him of the house the Addams family might live in were they to decide to relocate to the old South. But she was already planning balls. Which figured. Balls were a traditional southern event—like high school Friday night football—planned with all the attention that the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave to planning an invasion. And with as much hoopla and pageantry as a New Orleans Mardi Gras.
“The house has a marvelous history,” she told him as she followed him through the rooms. Lacy spiderwebs hung in all the corners, draped over fireplace mantels. “It was built by a young man, Edwin Blount, a distant cousin to Eugenia Blount Lamar.”
The name had been dropped as if he were expected to know it. He didn’t.
“Eugenia was a president-general of the Daughters of the Confederacy,” she explained at his politely blank look.
“Ah.” He nodded. “That Blount.”
Her eyes narrowed momentarily, as if suspecting she’d heard a tinge of sarcasm in his mild tone. Obviously deciding she’d imagined it, she went on with her story.
“They were to be married in the gardens out back. But the bride ran off with her daddy’s cotton broker on the day of the wedding. Poor Edwin.” She sighed dramatically. “It was a terrible scandal.”
“I can imagine.” Cash’s mutinous mind conjured up another image of Chelsea, seated behind him on his Harley, escaping from her cousin’s wedding.
It had been their last night together. And their hottest. He could remember every single detail except how many times she’d come. They’d both lost track long before dawn. Before he’d taken her back to her safe, traditional, old-money life. And her stiff-necked boyfriend.
What would have happened, Cash wondered, if she’d agreed to go to San Francisco with him that night? Would they have gotten married? Would he have become successful—and in turn, rich enough—to turn his back on the career he’d sought with such single-minded determination, to return home to his roots?
Hell. Reminding himself that Sunday morning quarterbacking was an amateur sport, and that thinking about might have beens was for losers, Cash returned his thoughts back to Roxanne’s running monologue.
“Of course the poor man couldn’t possibly live in the house,” she was saying. “Not after having received such a crushing emotional blow. Not to mention such a public humiliation.”
As he ran his fingers through the dust coating a nearby window, Cash murmured something that could have been an agreement.
“So he sold it to Ezekial Berry. Who was, of course, a descendant of the Virginia Berrys of Atlanta. His wife, Jane, was one of the Chattahoochee Valley Fitzgeralds. She was pregnant with their first child at the time.”
There was simply no escaping it. Who are your people? Cash decided that the old European aristocracy had nothing on southerners when it came to tracking ancestral bloodlines.
He wondered how anxious Roxanne Scarbrough would be to work with him if she knew his background. “The window glass has lost a lot of glazing,” he said. “But the majority of it, at least on this floor, seems in good shape.”
“Well, that’s good news.”
“It could be all you’re going to get.” He crossed the room. “The plaster’s a mess.” He picked at the cracked and broken wall. “See this?” He plucked out some black fibers and handed them to her.
“They feel a bit like paint brush bristles.”
“Close. It’s hair. Curried from the backs of horses or hogs undoubtedly raised on the plantation. Builders used it to help hold the plaster together.”
“How ingenious.”
“It’s also expensive to replace.”
“Surely they don’t use hog hair any longer?”
“No. Although, the technique’s the same, with plaster or strands of Fiberglas in place of the hair. But a good plaster man is hard to find these days. And when you can find one, he doesn’t come cheap.”
She tossed the black hairs onto the scarred wooden floor. “I told you, Mr. Beaudine, money is no object.”
Her words reminded Cash that he’d definitely come home to a new South. A booming South. A South on the rise. And riding that tide of economic prosperity were new people, creating new jobs, making new money. And spending it with an enthusiasm that made the old southern aristocracy sit up and take notice.
“Now where have I heard that before?” he murmured as he squatted down and frowned at the ominous trail of sawdust running along the baseboard.
“In this case it’s the truth,” she snapped, abandoning her spun sugar demeanor. “This home is my pièce de résistance. It’s the culmination of my life’s work. Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve struggled for, ends here. There will be,” she repeated firmly, her eyes as hard as stones, her lips pulled into a thin line, “no expense spared to do this correctly.”
Cash couldn’t help being impressed with her resolve. But he was still not entirely convinced. As they finished the tour of the house, risking the treacherous stairs to examine the second floor, he wondered if she realized that this project was a helluva long way from creating the ultimate Easter basket.
“That’s another thing.” He leaned against the crumbling wall of the grand entry hall, folded his arms across his chest and looked down at her. “You’re going to have to decide whether you want to renovate Belle Terre. Or restore it.”
“Renovate, restore, what’s the difference?” She was clearly growing impatient at his unwillingness to embrace her latest enterprise.
“There’s a big difference.” As her tone grew more harsh, he purposely kept his mild. “A restoration is a pure as possible replication of a home to its original state. While a renovation is exactly that—rebuilding to update the home with modern conveniences, to make it new again. And if authenticity has to fall by the wayside, too bad.”
Her frown revealed that she’d not exactly thought this little dilemma through. Cash wasn’t surprised. He’d discovered that most people had a rather serendipitous view of turning some crumbling ruin into an exact replica of its former glory, while also wanting to toss in a few Jacuzzi tubs, microwave ovens and media walls for comfort and convenience.
“As a purist, I believe I’d favor restoration.” Her gaze slowly circled the high ceilings and hand-carved moldings. “However, having seen the bathrooms, I have to admit that there’s a great deal to be said for renovation.”
Her eyes, which revealed intelligence and resolve along with the first sign of concern Cash had witnessed, met his. “I don’t suppose we could combine the two?” she asked hopefully.
“That’s usually the way it’s done.”
Her relief was palpable. “Then that’s what we’ll do. This project is incredibly important to me, Mr. Beaudine. I have a film crew on hand to document the reconstruction. I’m also in the process of negotiating with a writer, Chelsea Cassidy, to collaborate on my autobiography, which will, of course, include the restoration of Belle Terre.”
“Chelsea Cassidy is your biographer?” Having grown up having to fight for everything he’d accomplished, Cash had never been a big believer in fate. The idea of Chelsea coming to Raintree to ghostwrite Roxanne Scarbrough’s life story had him reconsidering.
“You know Ms. Cassidy?”
“I read her article in this month’s Vanity Fair.”
It had managed to be interesting, amusing and insightful. All at the same time. Which had been a surprise. He’d known that Chelsea was intelligent. And ambitious. But since their relationship hadn’t included much conversation, he’d failed to realize she was extremely talented outside the bedroom.
“Considering her lightweight subject matter, the article was quite entertaining,” Roxanne sniffed. “She does, however, happen to be the most sought after writer in her field. It’s quite a coup that she’s agreed to write my life story.”
Roxanne failed to even consider the possibility that Chelsea might refuse the assignment.
“Won’t it be difficult to collaborate?” Cash asked. “With her living in New York and you here in Raintree?”
One thing he didn’t want to do was to agree to take on such a Herculean restoration project only to discover that the owner of the house was spending most of her time in the Big Apple instead of where she belonged—on the job site making decisions.
