Ain't She Sweet? Read Online Free PDF

attention to one who’s been there and done that. Sometimes, Mr. Byrne, a simple ‘I’m sorry’ is the best a person can do.”
    “And sometimes the best isn’t good enough, is it?”
    He didn’t intend to offer his forgiveness, no surprise there. At the same time, her apology hadn’t exactly sounded heartfelt, and since he deserved heartfelt, her integrity demanded that she do better. But not here, not standing in the foyer like a servant.
    “Would you mind if I look around?” She didn’t wait for permission but swept past him into the living room.
    “By all means.” His drawl dripped with sarcasm.
    The taupe walls matched the marble inlays in the floor, while the deep-seated leather chairs and streamlined sofa repeated the dark brown of the foyer. A symmetrically arranged group of four sepia photographs of marble busts hung over the fireplace, which wasn’t the fireplace she remembered. The old oak mantel with its assorted scorch marks from the times Diddie had forgotten to open the flue had been replaced by a massive neoclassic mantel with a heavy cornice and carved pediment reminiscent of a Greek temple. In another home, she would have loved the bold juxtaposition of classic and modern, but not at Frenchman’s Bride.
    She turned to see him framed in the doorway, his posture reflecting the perfect arrogance of a man accustomed to being in control. He was only four years older than she, which would make him thirty-seven. When he’d been her teacher, those four years had formed an unbridgeable chasm, but now they were nothing. She remembered how romantic the Seawillows used to think he was, but Sugar Beth had refused to have a crush on someone who so stubbornly resisted her flirtatious overtures.
    She needed to get to that apology again, and this time she had to do it right, but the derision in his inspection of her, combined with the desecration of her home, got in the way. “Maybe I did you a favor. A teacher’s salary could never have bought all this.
    Congratulations on your book, by the way.”
    “You’ve read Whistle-stop ?”
    The skeptical arch of that elegant eyebrow got her hackles up. “Gosh, I tried to. But there were all those big words.”
    “That’s right. You never liked to tax your brain with anything more challenging than a fashion magazine, did you?”
    “Hey, if somebody doesn’t read them, there’ll be a whole shitload of women walking around in plaid polyester, and then think how sorry everybody’ll be.” She widened her eyes. “Oops . . . Now you’re goin’ to give me a detention for vulgarity.”
    Time hadn’t done a thing to improve his sense of humor. “Detentions never worked with you, did they, Sugar Beth? Your mother wouldn’t permit them.”
    “Diddie sure did have opinions about what was right and wrong for me.” She tilted her head just enough so her hair fell away from her fake diamond studs. “Did you know she refused to let me compete for Miss Mississippi? She said I was sure to win, and she wouldn’t allow any daughter of hers within spitting distance of that tacky Atlantic City.
    We had a big fuss about it, but you know how Diddie was, once she made up her mind about something.”
    “Oh, yes, I remember.”
    Of course he did. Diddie was the one who’d gotten him fired. Which made it time to drop the bull and take another stab at those long overdue amends.
    “I am sorry. Really. What I did was inexcusable.” Meeting his eyes was a lot tougher than she wanted it to be, but this time she didn’t falter. “I told her I’d lied, but the damage was done by then, and you’d already left town.”
    “Odd. I don’t recall Mummy trying to track me down. It’s strange an intelligent woman never figured out how to ring me up and say that all was forgiven, that I hadn’t—how did she put it that day?—betrayed my position of authority by compromising her innocent daughter’s virtue?”
    The way he lingered over those last three words told her he knew