He couldn’t.
Buck pulled into the driveway and cut the Blazer’s engine, having to cross over the steering wheel with the wrong hand to reach the key. He sat there regarding his home for a long moment, a faint frown between his eyes.
He had no idea why he had been fantasizing about Devil Anse’s long-legged brat; the old man had put the idea into his head with his free trial offer, damn him. And for all her rough upbringing, Miss Scarlett O. Scraggs was fantastically tempting.
Buck got out of the Blazer. The cold wind almost blew him onto the front porch. Once inside, the warmth of the house enveloped him, along with strong tantalizing odors. He remembered he hadn’t made any arrangements about what they were going to have for dinner. His stomach rebelled at the thought of another pizza.
He started down the long hallway, stopping abruptly at the light coming from the parlor.
He stepped inside. There stood the big blue spruce Christmas tree, fully decorated. The strings of Christmas tree lights that embraced it sparkled and blinked.
It was the first time in years that Buck had seen a Christmas tree with seemingly every last one of his mother’s collection of ornaments on it, including the paper garlands he and his sister had made in the first and second grade.
With all the stuff on it the tree should have been a mess. Instead, every branch, almost every needle, was so covered with decoration that the great blue spruce tree radiated a remarkably homey, jumbled sort of – well, beauty.
If you were familiar with the Grissom family ornaments you could just stand and look at the tree for hours, he thought, remembering the story behind each item fashioned by children’s hands, each faintly crazed old glass ball, the grandparents’ German imported Father Christmases holding their blown-glass miniature trees, the now less-than-sparkling gold and silver tinsel ropes that came from the long-closed Nancyville McCrory’s.
Someone had done a good job. With the strings of lights, the tree blazed happily.
At that moment the damnedest, most bizarre apparition appeared from around the other side of the tree. Startled, Buck could only blink.
It seemed to be some sort of lumpy pink satin specter, drooping around the bottom, wearing a flappy straw hat with satin flowers.
When it saw him standing there the banshee recoiled in horror. Then it whirled, scuttling for the dining room with faint, ratlike squeaks of alarm.
Buck stared after it. The little sister? Then what the hell was she doing dressed up like Halloween? He started after her.
The odors in the far end of the hall were even more tantalizing. Before Buck could throw open the kitchen door, though, it swung out and some strange girl – woman – stood in the door with the kitchen light behind her. A ravishing female in a dark shirt, tight jeans, her dark hair pulled back with a ribbon.
“Hel-lo,” Buck said. He stepped back in appreciative surprise.
It was undoubtedly somebody who’d come with Judy Heamstead to bring the church clothes. But new in town; Buck had never seen her before.
“Don’t be down on Farrie,” the willowy figure cried. “She didn’t mean any harm to the tree, she just wanted to fix it up. She’s never seen anything like it before!”
For a moment he stood staring. “Farrie? Farrie?”
Even in the glaring kitchen light he couldn’t believe it. It was, he realized with a sinking feeling, Scarlett O’Hara Scraggs.
“It will be all right,” she was telling him rapidly. “You’ll feel better about it when I feed you dinner!”
Dinner? In a daze Buck gazed past her. If the Christmas tree wasn’t, by some miracle, a mess, the kitchen certainly was. Everything seemed to have been pulled out from where it belonged and then emptied, dropped, or spilled in a different place. Still, when he sniffed the air it smelled wonderful.
Buck’s moment of hope vanished with Scarlett’s next words.
She touched him on the arm, gazing up at him somewhat anxiously. “Don’t look like that,” she murmured in her husky voice. “You’re gonna like it. I cooked every bit myself.”
Nine
“The girl from the church showed me how to get the meat out of the freezer and thaw it,” Scarlett said. “That was the biggest part of the job.”
They were seated, Scarlett and Farrie and Buck, at the big mahogany table in the dining room. Through the sliding doors the Victorian parlor looked better without the clutter of cardboard boxes. The bright glitter of the huge Christmas tree reached almost to the ceiling.
“I was supposed to put the meat in the microwave thing, but she’d left by that time and I couldn’t get it to work. Anyway,” Scarlett added, looking down at the assortment of food on the table, “ten pounds of hamburger is a lot. When I got it thawed out I knew I was just going to have to keep cooking.”
“No problem.” Sheriff Buck tried awkwardly for a piece of meatloaf with the fork in his left hand. “I can’t get over it. Everything’s so delicious.”
The meatloaf slipped and landed on the table-cloth beside his plate. Scarlett tactfully picked it up and put it on her own. She’d been watching the sheriff closely from the moment they’d sat down, but he seemed sincere. Of course he’d been a little surprised that she’d cooked dinner, even after Scarlett had explained that she’d learned it all from the cookbooks they’d taken from the clothes boxes that afternoon. He’d looked tired when he came in and Scarlett saw at once he was out of sorts: Demon had left her marks all over his uniform, and he’d had some sort of accident as his arm was in a sling. Sheriff Buck went right into the dining room, pulled up a chair, and sat down.
Now, Scarlett saw, he’d certainly been hungry in spite of his hurt arm. He’d had a helping of the Italian spaghetti with meat sauce, two big servings of Spicy Shepherds’ Pie, a slice of House and Garden’s Heirloom Recipe Meatloaf, and a cup of homemade chili. That left only the Swedish meatballs to go.
Farrie, too, hadn’t taken her eyes off him. Scarlett picked up the bowl of meatballs and shook her head at her sister in warning. She knew Farrie wasn’t thinking about whether or not the sheriff liked the food.
Marriage. That was the only thing on Farrie’s mind. It was right there in her face. Sooner or later Sheriff Buck Grissom was going to wonder why her little sister kept staring at him like that.
“Take off your hat,” Scarlett told Farrie, frowning. “People don’t eat dinner with their hats on.”
Without shifting her gaze, Farrie reached up and pulled off the hat with the rhinestone pin and peach satin roses. The sheriff wasn’t watching; he was having trouble with the bowl of meatballs. The brown, glistening globes in what the cookbook described as authentic Swedish gravy kept bouncing away from his probing fork. He wasn’t at all good at using his left hand; the tablecloth around his dinner plate was spattered with food.
Scarlett picked up her own fork. “Here, let me,” she said.
He started to object, then watched as she scooped a serving of meatballs and gravy onto his plate. “The dinner is delicious,” he said with an effort, “I’m not kidding. I can’t believe you taught yourself to cook like this out of a book.” He looked down the table, hesitating. “You don’t have any – ah, vegetables, do you?”
Scarlett was cutting a meatball in half for him, and stopped abruptly. “Vegetables? I just cooked up all the meat, I didn’t think about any vegetables! What kind of vegetables do you want?”
“We have iced tea,” Farrie piped.
The sheriff looked across the table, his eyes resting on the too-big dress that hung drooping around the child’s arms and neck. “Does she have to wear that thing?” he growled.