September Morning

“I can think of a better word,” Kathryn said under her breath.

“Isn't it amazing,” Phillip asked his mother, “how brave she is when Blake isn't here?”

“Amazing.” Maude nodded. She smiled at Kathryn. “Cheer up, sweetheart. Let me tell you what Eve Barrington has planned for your homecoming party Saturday night…the one I was going to give you if Blake hadn't been called away…”

***

The arrangements for the party were faultless, Kathryn discovered. The florist had delivered urns of dried flowers in blazing fall colors, and tasteful arrangements of daisies and mums and baby's breath to decorate the buffet tables. The intimate little gathering at the nearby estate swelled to over fifty people, not all of them contemporaries of Kathryn's. Quite a number, she noticed with amusement, were politicians. Maude was lobbying fiercely for legislation to protect a nearby stretch of South Carolina's unspoiled river land from being zoned for business. No doubt she'd pleaded with Eve to add those politicians to the guest list, Kathryn thought wickedly.

Nan Barrington, Eve's daughter, and one of Kathryn's oldest friends, pulled her aside while the musicians launched into a frantic rock number.

“Mother hates hard rock,” she confided as the band blared out. “I can't imagine why she hired that particular band, when it's all they play.”

“The name,” Kathryn guessed. “It's the Glen Miller ensemble, and Glen spells his name with just one ‘n.’ Your mother probably thought they played the same kind of music as the late Glenn Miller.”

“That's Mother,” Nan agreed with a laugh. She ran a finger over the rim of her glass, filled with sparkling rum punch. Her blond hair sparkled with the same amber color as she looked around the room. “I thought Blake was going to come by when he got home. It's after ten now.”

Kathryn smiled at her indulgently. Nan had had a crush on Blake since their early teens. Blake pretended not to notice, treating both girls like the adolescents he thought them.

“You know Blake hates parties,” she reminded the shorter girl.

“It can't be for lack of partners to take to them,” Nan sighed.

Kathryn frowned at her. She cupped her own glass in her hands and wondered why that statement nagged her. She knew Blake dated, but it had been a long time since she'd spent more than a few days at Greyoaks. Not for years. There was too much to do. Relatives she could visit in faraway places like France and Greece and even Australia. Cruises with friends like Nan. School events and girlfriends to visit and parties to go to. There hadn't been much reason to stay at Greyoaks. Especially since that last bout with Blake over Jack Harris. She sighed, remembering how harsh he'd been about it. Jack Harris had turned every color in the rainbow before Blake got through telling him what he thought in that cold, precise voice that always accompanied his temper. When he'd turned it on Kathryn, it had been all she could manage not to run. She was honestly afraid of Blake. Not that he'd beat her or anything. It was a different kind of fear, strange and ever-present, growing as she matured.

“Why the frown?” Nan asked suddenly.

“Was I frowning?” She laughed. She shrugged, sipping her punch. Her eyes ran over her shorter friend's pale blue evening gown, held up by tiny spaghetti straps. “I love your dress.”

“It isn't a patch on yours,” Nan sighed, wistfully eyeing the Grecian off-the-shoulder style of Kathryn's delicate white gown. The wisps of chiffon foamed and floated with every movement. “It's a dream.”

“I have a friend in Atlanta who's a budding designer,” she explained with a smile. “This is from her first collection. She had a showing at that new department store on Peachtree Street.”

“Everything looks good on you,” Nan said genuinely. “You're so tall and willowy.”

“Skinny, Blake says.” She laughed and then suddenly froze as she looked across the room straight into a pair of narrow, dark eyes in a face as hard as granite.

He was as tall and big as she remembered, all hard-muscled grace and blatant masculinity. His head was bare, his dark hair gleaming in the light from the crystal chandelier overhead. His deeply tanned face had its own inborn arrogance, a legacy from his grandfather, who had forged a small empire from the ashes of the old confederacy. His eyes were cold, even at a distance, his mouth chiseled and firm and just a little cruel. Kathryn shivered involuntarily as his eyes trailed up and down the revealing dress she was wearing, clearly disapproving.

Nan followed her gaze, and her small face lit up. “It's Blake!” she exclaimed. “Kathryn, aren't you going to say hello to him?”

She swallowed. “Oh, yes, of course,” she said, aware of Maude going forward to greet her eldest and Phillip waving to him carelessly from across the room.

“You don't look terribly enthusiastic about it,” Nan remarked, studying the flush in her friend's cheeks and the slight tremor in the slender hands that held the crystal glass.

“He'll be furious because I haven't got a bow in my hair and a teddy bear under my arm,” she said with a mirthless laugh.

“You're not a little girl anymore,” Nan said, coming to her friend's defense despite her attraction to Blake.

“Tell Blake,” she sighed. “See?” she murmured as he lifted his arrogant head and motioned for her to join him. “I'm being summoned.”

“Could you manage to look a little less like Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine?” Nan whispered.

“I can't help it. My neck's tingling. See you,” she muttered, moving toward Blake with a faint smile.

She moved forward, through the throng of guests, her heart throbbing as heavily as the rock rhythm that shook the walls around her. Six months hadn't erased the bitterness of their last quarrel, and judging by the look on Blake's rugged face, it was still fresh in his mind, too.

He drew deeply on his cigarette, looking down his straight nose at her, and she couldn't help noticing how dangerously attractive he was in his dark evening clothes. The white silk of his shirt was a perfect foil for his olive complexion, his arrogant good looks. The tang of his Oriental cologne drifted down into her nostrils, a fragrance that echoed his vibrant masculinity.

“Hello, Blake,” she said nervously, glad Maude had vanished into the throng of politicians so she didn't have to pretend more enthusiasm.

His eyes sketched her slender figure, lingering at the plunging neckline that revealed tantalizing glimpses of the swell of her small, high breasts.

“Advertising, Kate?” he asked harshly. “I thought you'd learned your lesson with Harris.”

“Don't call me Kate,” she fired back. “And it's no more revealing than what everyone else is wearing.”

“You haven't changed,” he sighed indulgently. “All fire and lace and wobbly legs. I hoped that finishing school might give you a little maturity.”

Her emerald eyes burned. “I'm twenty, Blake!”

One dark eyebrow went up. “What do you want me to do about it?”

She started to reply that she didn't want him to do a thing, but the anger faded away suddenly. “Oh, Blake,” she moaned, “why do you have to spoil my party? It's been such fun…”

“For whom?” he asked, his eyes finding several of the politicians present. “You or Maude?”

“She's trying to save the wildlife along the Edisto River,” she said absently. “They want to develop part of the riverfront.”

“Yes, let's save the water moccasins and sandflies, at all costs!” he agreed lightly, although Kathryn knew he was as avid a conservationist as Maude.

She peeked up at him. “I seem to remember that you went on television to support that wilderness proposal on the national forest.”

He raised his cigarette to his firm lips. “Guilty,” he admitted with a faint, rare smile. He glanced toward the band and the smile faded. “Are they all playing the same song?” he asked irritably.

“I'm not sure. I thought you liked music,” she teased.

He glowered down at her. “I do. But that,” he added with a speaking glance in the band's direction, “isn't.”

“My generation thinks it is,” she replied with a challenge in her bright eyes. “And if you don't like contemporary music, then why did you bother to come to the party, you old stick-in-the-mud?”

He reached down and tapped her on the cheek with a long, stinging finger. “Don't be smart,” he told her. “I came because I hadn't seen you for six months, if you want the truth.”

“Why? So you could drive me home and bawl me out in privacy on the way?” she asked.

His heavy dark brows came together. “How much of that punch have you had?” he asked curtly.

“Not quite enough,” she replied with an impudent grin and tossed off the rest of the punch in her glass.