Seducing Savannah (Southern Scandals 1)

And then he’d died.

Savannah’s mother had continued to spoil her, though in her own odd, almost prosaic way. Ernestine, who’d grown up on the wrong side of the social tracks, had urged her pretty, popular daughter to be everything—head cheerleader, homecoming queen, soughtafter date.

Savannah winced in response to memories that were almost too painful to contemplate.

“Savannah?” Emily prodded. “Aren’t you going to open your box?”

Savannah wanted to refuse. Wanted to shove the box and the trunk right back into that hole and cover them with dirt, to stomp it down and pretend she could do the same with the memories. But then she

looked up at Emily and saw the rather lost expression in her younger cousin’s wide blue eyes, and Savannah’s heart twisted in sympathy.

“Yes,” Savannah said gently. “I’m going to open it.”

By unspoken agreement, they moved apart. Savannah had packed the contents in layers of newspaper. The Honoria Gazette. She was tempted to look through the old pages, but her attention was drawn, instead, to the objects they had protected.

There was a small tiara, studded with rhinestones that spelled out Junior Miss Honoria. A miniature royal-blue-and-white pom-pom to represent her envied position as head junior-high cheerleader. A program from a school play, in which Savannah had played the lead. A dried-up corsage. A photograph enclosed in a clear plastic sleeve—herself as freshman prom queen, wearing a formfitting, shimmering blue gown and standing beside her date, Vince Hankins, captain of the football team. Every girl in town had wanted to date him. Savannah had felt like the luckiest girl in the world when he’d turned his frequently fickle attentions her way.

She stared blankly at that photograph, remembering….

Remembering the time he’d hit her for smiling at another boy. He’d left a bruise on her cheek. She’d told everyone she’d fallen.

Remembering the way he’d made her cry by telling her that she would be nobody if he dumped her. That the girls who envied her and emulated her would turn on her if he declared her “uncool.” She’d believed him. Rightly so, it had later turned out.

Remembering the night of her sixteenth birthday, when he’d made her prove her love for him in the back seat of his father’s Cadillac. She’d cried all night, then had to wear extra makeup to school the next day to hide the evidence. That was the day he’d given her his class ring to wear. The envious looks she’d gotten from the other girls had almost made her forget the humiliation of the night before.

She’d been an idiot. Blind. Gullible. Shallow. Needy. And when she’d become more trouble than she was worth to Vince—when she had become pregnant less than six months after that first clumsy bout of experimentation—he’d dropped her like a hot coal. And so had all those “friends” who’d formerly surrounded her.

She’d been so young when she’d packed this box. Fifteen. Shallow and materialistic, obsessed with her looks, with possessions and popularity. And yet she’d been so eager and hopeful, so certain that everything she wanted would come to her in time. Vince Hankins had stolen that optimism from her along with her innocence.

She forced her thoughts back to the earlier memories, those precious times with her father. She’d been so blissful then. Even when she’d buried this box, she’d been happy, thriving on the attention she’d received, naively unaware of how quickly envy could turn ugly.

She shouldn’t have let Vince take her happy memories along with everything else, she realized with a renewed surge of anger.

Thoughtfully, she looked at her cousins, wondering if the memories their treasures had evoked were any more pleasant than her own. Tara’s expression was unreadable, but it wasn’t hard to tell that she wasn’t happy. Emily looked stricken, her face pale as she stared down at something she held in her hand. Savannah didn’t know which of her cousins needed comforting most. She hardly felt in a position to help either of them.

She looked down at the box in her hand, at the unopened letter lying among the other mementos. And she knew she couldn’t open it, at least not just then.

First, she had to look long and hard at what her life had become. And then, she had to decide if she wanted it to remain that way.

1

HE WAS WATCHING her again.

Savannah glanced across the outdoor dance floor toward the man who leaned against a palm tree on the far side. Tiny white lights strung overhead combined with flickering candlelight from the tables surrounding the dance floor to cast intriguing shadows on his handsome face, increasing the air of mystery surrounding him. She thought of him tonight as a pirate, an illusion enhanced by their Caribbean surroundings, by his loose black shirt and fitted black slacks, by the longish dark hair that tumbled carelessly over his forehead.

He fascinated her.

She took a sip of her champagne and told herself that the bubbles must be going to her head. Just because the man was sinfully gorgeous, just because he seemed to be staring at her every time she’d spotted him, there was no reason for her to get carried away by fantasy.

And yet a tiny voice inside her kept asking, Why not get carried away? This vacation on Serendipity Island was the last reckless adventure of her twenties. A chance to remember what it was like to be young, free, daring…and totally without responsibility for the first time in thirteen years.

An orchestra played from a raised platform at one end of the dance floor, filling the perfect, tropical night with sultry music. Couples swayed and twirled, talking softly, merging in the shadows, looking so happy and cozy that Savannah felt a twinge of envy.

That was something else she’d never had, she mused. Romance. True intimacy.

Was it too late?

A shiver of awareness coursed down her spine, causing her to look again in the direction of the man in black. He was making his way toward her, a look of determination on his face that caused equal reactions of excitement and wariness within her.