Southern Belle. Fiona Hood-Stewart
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“You spend the night in my arms then walk out as cool as you please to a date with your ex? Oops, I forgot, you’re still married to the man. Perhaps you never meant to leave him? I can assure you that from where I was standing the two of you looked awfully cozy.”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“I happened to walk into the Palace Hotel at lunchtime today. Unless I’m much mistaken, you were on a sofa by the window of the lounge smiling at someone who was kissing your hand. You didn’t seem too upset about it.”
She drew back, shocked at just how angry he was. “Harlan came here to try and persuade me to return to Savannah—he’s worried that my absence makes him look bad. I told him that wasn’t an option right now. We had lunch and now he’s leaving again.”
“Do I look stupid, I wonder?” Johnny asked conversationally, hands stuffed in the pockets of his corduroys.
“No, you look jealous,” she retorted, matching his tone. “And with no reason to be.”
“Jealous? Ha! That’s a good one. Why on earth would I be jealous? After all, we’re just having a holiday fling, aren’t we?”
“Yes. I suppose we are,” she replied quietly, looking him straight in the eyes.
“If that’s what you really feel, then I agree wholeheartedly,” he responded stiffly.
Also by FIONA HOOD-STEWART
SILENT WISHES
THE LOST DREAMS
THE STOLEN YEARS
THE JOURNEY HOME
Look for the latest novel by
FIONA HOOD-STEWART
SAVANNAH SECRETS
Southern Belle
Fiona Hood-Stewart
To Carter Parsley,
the other Southern Belle With love
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to all those who have helped me while writing this book. To Remer and Susan Lane, Howard and Mary Morrison, Remer and Christina Lane and Fran Garfunkel of Savannah, Georgia, for their generous hospitality and helpful input. To Bill Riley for the reference to the Samovar, which he told me over dinner at a castle in Switzerland, and last but not least to those whom I share my life with and who patiently bear with my writing every day: John, Sergio and Diego. As always my thanks to my editor Miranda Stecyk and the team: Dianne Moggy, Amy Moore-Benson and Donna Hayes.
Contents
1
The much awaited rain—the rain everyone had been praying for, because the drought had been so bad—poured heavily down in doleful drops, battering the roof, dripping from the tiles and the gutters, past the windows of the wide, netted porch, before streaming relentlessly onto the grass. Within a few hours the yellowing lawn was nothing but a broad, soggy puddle stretching down to the Ogeechee River, giving the plantation’s freshly planted gardens an abandoned, almost forlorn look.
Curled in the rocker in the enclosed section