Southern Comforts Read Online Free PDF Page B

always easy being Roxanne Scarbrough. But, she considered with a self-satisfied smile, no one did it better.
    The breeze from the fan stirred the fragrance of potpourri she’d created from pink freesia and Lady Banks roses growing in the formal gardens.
    When she’d first planted the garden, several members of the Raintree garden club had warned her against including the old-fashioned rose bushes. Local legend prevailed that when a Lady Banks got old enough to shade your grave, you’d die. Not the least bit superstitious, Roxanne had ignored the caution. But knowing a good story when she heard one, she’d included the myth in her latest life-style book, Strolling Through Grandmother’s Southern Garden.
    She skimmed a fax she’d received this morning from her agent regarding Chelsea Cassidy. Although at first glance,she’d considered the writer to be a definite lightweight, the deft way she’d handled her interview and the Vanity Fair article Roxanne had read on the flight back from New York proved that appearances were definitely deceiving.
    Roxanne had no concerns about the writer rejecting the proposal her agent was going to make. People did not say no to Roxanne Scarbrough.
    Especially men, she considered with a slow smile ripe with feminine intent as she glanced over at the mantel clock. She should have left a half hour ago for her luncheon engagement. Not that she was in any particular hurry. It was, after all, a lady’s prerogative to keep a gentleman waiting.
    However, in this case, it would be a blessed relief to leave the house. The stifling humidity clogged Roxanne’s lungs, making her feel as if she were trying to breathe underwater. Her dress—a silk wash of watercolor flowers with a dangerously plunging neckline, selected specifically for today’s lunch with Cash Beaudine—already seemed too hot and heavy against her heated skin.
    Deciding to open one more piece of mail, she picked up a sterling silver letter opener in the Francis I pattern she claimed she’d inherited from her unfortunately deceased mother, and slit open a cheap dimestore envelope marked Personal that had been forwarded from the staff of “Good Morning America.” Obviously another piece of fan mail. Considering the inferior stationery, this was a person in dire need of life-style training.
    The paper was badly ink stained, as if the letter had been written with one of those horrid plastic ballpoint pens one saw everywhere these days. As her eyes skimmed down the wrinkled page, Roxanne’s heart clenched. The scrawled handwriting was all too familiar.
    â€œDear Cora Mae…”
    She pressed a beringed hand against the front of her silkdress and wondered if she could be having a heart attack. Black spots danced like whirling demons in front of her eyes.
    Belying the fictitious Maw Maw’s now famous axiom, it was, indeed, sweat that puddled beneath Roxanne’s armpits and slithered wetly down her sides.
    Â 
    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,