His Southern Sweetheart

“I’m sorry!” the young artist cried.

Natalia reached for a napkin from the makeup-covered vanity in front of her and shooed her away before turning her attention back to Amelia. “Don’t worry,” she said, smiling sweetly. “How about you go take a break while I talk to my friend here? You can let the cameramen know I’m almost ready.”

Amelia leaned forward, her mouth gaping in disbelief. Natalia Ruiz lived up to every stereotype of being a diva. Amelia didn’t take her crap, which probably made them such close friends, but others quaked when Natalia was upset. “What happened at your dinner to bring out this softer side in you?”

“Whatever.” Natalia rolled her eyes and waited until the doors closed, leaving them alone. “All right fine. Is your mic on?”

“No,” Amelia said with a sigh. “Have you forgotten? I’m suspended.”

“Suspended?”

“A strongly suggested vacation to take care of my grandmother, same thing.” Amelia shrugged her shoulders.

“Wait.” Natalia’s eyes widened. “For how long?”

“A month.”

Natalia’s mouth gaped open. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Amelia waved off the apology and forced a toothy smile across her face. “I get to spend some time with my grandmother.”

“When I couldn’t find you Friday morning to explain—” Natalia patted Amelia’s shoulder “—you were still upset about getting the call about your grandmother. It’s horrible. How is she now?”

With a sigh, Amelia updated Natalia with what had gone wrong. Grandmamma had fallen down the stairs of her two-story farmhouse down in Southwood. She lived so far out in the country it was a miracle someone had found her. She’d lain on the floor with a broken leg until Pastor Rivers had stopped by randomly—thank God—to check on her on Thursday evening. Amelia couldn’t imagine how painful it must’ve been for her elderly grandmother to come tumbling down the stairs. As a child, she herself had found the stairs too steep for her little legs and had loved sliding down the banister as a shortcut.

“A broken leg,” Amelia concluded. “My mama wants the downstairs office for her to live in so she won’t have to climb the stairs.”

“Is your mom going to move back home?”

Amelia frowned and shook her head. “No way. My grandmamma’s home is nothing like your mansion.”

“What?” Natalia asked with a pout.

“She has a barn attached to the side of her home, but that’s the extent of privacy. Nothing like your place where your whole family lives under the same roof, but you guys can go days without running into one another.”

“The grass isn’t always greener,” Natalia said, glancing down at her hands in her lap.

“I like my privacy, Natalia. I grew up in Southwood, a pretty much one-streetlight town. Everyone knows everyone.”

“Sounds cozy.”

“Not when you’re the one person everyone hates.”

Natalia glanced up, her features softened. “What?”

“Never mind. Look, I have a month to get everything ready. Mr. Kelly said as soon as I take care of things back home, I can come back to work. I am going to get the porch steps lowered or put a ramp in there. Grandmamma will have a fit either way, so while she’s recuperating in the hospital, I’ll take this time to go down South for repairs.”

“Good thing MET hosts a bunch of remodeling shows,” said Natalia. “You can get any of those guys to fix up the place for free. Hell, you should even turn it into a show.”

“We’ve been spending too much time together,” Amelia said with a grin, rubbing her hands on the front of her dark-wash denim jeans, “trying to find the television angle for everything.”

“Well, I have to come up with something. I am afraid to ask, but is this my fault?” Natalia pouted her glossy bottom lip again.

Although her friend was wearing so much makeup, Amelia chewed her naked bottom lip. Normally she brushed her lashes a few times with black mascara and maybe a colored, flavored lip gloss and called it a day. “Sweetie, it is,” Amelia said dryly. Then Natalia’s frown deepened and Amelia let her off with a half smile and a slight push against her shoulder. “I’m kidding.”

“I’m so sorry about your grandmother.”

“You’re not to blame for what happened to her or what happened with my job,” Amelia sniffed, pushing the pity party out of her head. Christopher claimed he wanted Amelia to use her hours upon hours of leave time wisely. Just as she’d proven herself in the past to be a dedicated employee at MET, family meant everything to him. Mr. Kelly made it clear for her to enjoy her time with her family and to not be distracted by anything at work. Amelia was prohibited from contacting anyone from the network, so the idea of having help was null and void. Southwood was small enough she could find someone to assist, provided she was allowed to tell her folks what had happened. But Grandmamma wanted to keep the incident a secret. Amelia inhaled deeply. “I am to blame. You were my responsibility.”

“But still,” Natalia whined. “I do apologize.”

Amelia liked to think of herself as a forgiving kind of gal. “Make it up to me by telling me who this mystery man is?”

A part of Amelia wished she had gotten the conversation on film. When Natalia’s aunt, Yadira, had approached MET about getting the network involved with their lives, Natalia had already turned eighteen. So there wasn’t much that was known of her teen years.

“Stephen and I go back, way back,” Natalia explained as her heavy lashes fluttered dreamily. “He’s an ex who is practically Villa San Juan royalty. I was glad when his brother contacted me and said he needed to talk,” Natalia moaned.

“What happened?”

“Let’s just say if Tía Yadira had the ability to arrange a marriage, it would have been between us.”

“A marriage made in Puerto Rican heaven,” Amelia teased as her eyes glazed over, imagining the ratings they would have received. This would have been a perfect angle for a reality show for MET. A multicultural wedding was right up their alley. She pictured in her mind the memo she’d have written:

Dear MET executives,

We’ve watched her grow up; now let’s follow the road to the Ruiz wedding.

Sincerely,

Amelia

“Hey, didn’t a mass school shooting happen there about ten years ago?” Other than the tragic ending to a school year, Amelia had heard nothing but good things about Villa San Juan, the small island off the coast of Florida. It was on her lists of places to visit once she gathered some vacation time. Maybe once she made sure Grandmamma was okay, she’d check it out and come back to MET with a follow-up story on the tragedy. For a moment Amelia’s eyes glazed over. She wondered if anyone had done a follow-up story. Where were the students now? Had they gotten over the trauma?

“Thirteen years ago, and it was right after Stephen graduated, but his brother and cousins were affected by it. As for me and Stephen, clearly, things did not end well with us, and so I supposed he somehow blamed me for his mistrust in women.” Natalia went on about her relationship with Stephen while Amelia made a mental list of who to contact for a follow-up report.

“Oh, sure,” said Amelia, her voice elevated with sarcasm. “You’d never do anything to hurt a man’s feelings.”

Natalia rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Stephen happened before I became famous.” She added air quotes with her French-manicured hands.

“Well, don’t you have that effect on people,” said Amelia. “I’ve been producing you for a while now and you do have a way with leading men on for your own entertainment.”

“Speaking of leading men on,” Natalia said, blatantly averting the subject, “I may have told you I was taking a nap, but how did things turn out for you and Nate?”

As if a needle scratched an album off a record player, Amelia’s thoughts screeched to a halt. She cocked her head to the side as her heart slammed against her chest and the image of the one-night-stand hottie filtered through her head. Quickly, visions of the night she’d met Nate began to play like a movie on a screen. The ending became all too clear now. The only reason she’d gone down to the bar instead of hanging out with the film crew was because she’d given everyone the night off since Natalia had said she was going to bed. Amelia had gone downstairs to get a well-earned drink.

After years of following Natalia around, Amelia knew when the girl blurted out more than she wanted, especially when she pressed her glossy lips together as if to stop further words. To make things more obvious, Natalia clamped her hands over her mouth.

“I never said anything about who I was with.” Amelia raised a brow and crossed her legs in preparation of an interrogation. The gold flowers on her flip-flops caught the lighting in the room.

“Okay, fine,” Natalia huffed. “Nate Reyes met you on purpose. He knew I needed to speak with Stephen alone. I knew it would be impossible because of the crew but he helped me out.”

A sickening feel gurgled in the pit of Amelia’s stomach. The room became hot. The five-bulb vanity-mirror lights began to heat her face. “It was a setup?”

“No!” Natalia said, apparently panicking. “I mean. He was just distracting you for a minute.”

He’d ended up with a lot more than conversation over a drink. Amelia swallowed past the bile in the back of her throat. Nate used her. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Always around the glamorous Natalia, she might come off a bit of a plain Jane, but when Nate had picked her up in the bar, she’d felt like the star. Everyone in the bar, men and women alike, had stood taller at the sight of him. And now to learn he’d distracted her on purpose? The whole thing had been engineered. Because of him, she’d been suspended from her job. He needed to pay.

“So he’s from Villa San Juan, you say?”

Now Natalia cocked her head to the side as she spoke. “Actually, it’s kind of funny you mentioned your hometown. I swear he mentioned living in a Southwood but he never described it as drab as you have. Must be a different one.”

“Georgia?” Her mind recalled Nate asking her about her Southern upbringing and how he liked farms. Turned him on, didn’t he say?

“Yeah, but don’t take it too seriously if he flirted with you and bought you a drink,” said Natalia.

“Of course not,” Amelia mused. Her mind calculated how far her family’s farmhouse was from the downtown Southwood. Not far at all, she thought. Perhaps while taking care of Grandmamma, she’d pay him a visit.

“This is going to bug me. Let me find my emails.” Natalia reached for her phone in her pocket and began swiping across the screen, mumbling as she searched her listings. “Nate is a big ol’ flirt. He didn’t mean any harm, but as a matter of fact, I think his playboy ways are about to catch up with the green-eyed god. Oh, look! Southwood is saved in my searches. This is your hometown, right?”

Amelia leaned forward to read the location: Southwood, Georgia, population six thousand. She nodded.

“Cool,” said Natalia. “Look, he’s up for a bachelor auction. Karma is going to catch up with him because I am sure he’s got a handful of women down there. All his women are going to try and cash in.”

Seemed like the visit would be sooner than expected. For once Amelia couldn’t wait to get back to Southwood—population six thousand, or about to be five-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine.

* * *

Despite wearing a black tailored suit, a green Oxford shirt and argyle tie with various blends of green, Nate had never felt more naked than on the night of the bachelor auction. Women groped his pecs, his biceps, and he swore one of the church ladies pinched his butt.

The nightlife at the usual watering hole in Southwood had come out with a roaring blast. The community seemed to have pulled together for this charity event and crawled out of the woodworks at Southern Charm.

Who would purposely come up with the idea of a bachelor auction? If Nate didn’t know any better, he’d swear his brother had, just to piss him off. Some of the bachelors he met backstage were already set to be purchased by their wives. Briefly, Nate wondered if the wives did it just to ensure the tasks around their homes would be taken care of. Another part of Nate wondered if the women he’d spent time with in the last few months had gotten together to test his rule of No complications. With Southwood being such a small town, Nate understood gossip happened, but he always made sure he never gave the wrong impression. Maybe some of the women felt forty hours of time together could dissuade him. Thank God Pastor Rivers warned everyone about the sin of premarital sex. Nate wasn’t usually a religious man, but it was good to know his boundaries.

“Remember, this is for a good cause,” Lexi whispered, nudging her shoulder against Nate’s as he waited at the bar for the bartender to return with his longneck bottle of beer.

“I keep telling myself the same thing,” he said with a sigh.

The DJ in the elevated booth next to the stage put on a new song, which drafted a lot of ladies to the dance floor. Tonight’s event had brought out the old and the young alike. Four-top tables draped in white linen and centered around a single candle circled the dance floor and the second level. A dozen or so silver catering trays showed off some of the traditional hot hors d’oeuvres. He’d peeked earlier and found sweet corn cupcakes, fried green tomatoes, pimento cheese sandwiches and a few trays of deviled eggs sprinkled with smoked paprika. Nate had grown up on traditional Puerto Rican cuisine, which meant a lot of sofrito, pork, rice and beans. He enjoyed Southern meals—perhaps a little too much. Thank God for Southwood’s gym.

He looked around. He was at a bar filled with women and yet not one appealed to him. Ever since the night he’d met that beauty from Atlanta he’d found no woman who could compare to her. He figured he must be going crazy, because prior to the Atlanta trip, drinking and morally loose ladies were his thing.

His eyes scanned the room for a glimpse of his brother, who’d nominated him for the auction. The bastard hadn’t shown up yet.

“Stephen’s finishing up some work in his office,” Lexi said, reading his mind.

Nate half nodded. “Have you taken a look at the work I did on yours?”

Lexi beamed. “I have! You’re fantastic!”

“And cheap labor, too,” he joked. For the past few weeks he’d been helping Lexi extend her dress shop. Guilt stemming from the way his brother had treated her when the two of them first met had swayed Nate’s decision to help. Thanks to Stephen’s spiteful impulse buy, Grits and Glam Gowns and Reyes Realty and Contracting were next-door neighbors. Lexi had been making a pitch for expansion the day Stephen barged into her office.

“I am going to pay you,” Lexi said.

“Whatever. I am having fun. Since Stephen decided to move down here, he’s contracted many plantation-style homes in southern Georgia to all of Hollywood. And, of course, the kids are getting ready to go back to school. Like my brother said the other day, business is slow. I have nothing but free time on my hands.”

The bartender appeared with a longneck bottle of beer and a tumbler of cognac. Nate’s eyes darted downward. “I didn’t order this.”

“The lady at the end of the bar did.”

Nate craned his neck, hoping excitedly for some crazy reason to find Amelia Marlow standing there. He grabbed the top of the bottle with two fingers and sipped while glancing down the end of the bar. He prayed he masked his disappointment well. Brittany Foley offered him a wide, toothy grin, swinging her shoulders suggestively to the techno music pounding away. Through each white laser beam flashing through the air, Brittany winked and licked her lips. The tongue. Nate willed his body to respond to her nonverbal invitation. When the hell did he need to will himself? Brittany’s body rivaled all the covers of every swimsuit magazine out there, but in order to keep her job she needed to wear dowdy drab sweaters and long pants and quite often wore her hair up. Away from school, she was a complete knockout. The other men standing around her saw her for the siren she aimed to be.

“You have an admirer.” Lexi nudged his shoulder again.

“Don’t remind me.”

“I thought you two were getting along great at the end of the summer?” Lexi said, casting a glance at the end of the bar. “Philly says you two went out on a few dates.”

Nate half grinned. “Yeah, well, Philly is five years old.”

“Five going on eighteen,” mumbled Lexi. “So what’s the deal with you two?”

“No deal.” Nate shrugged.

“Will you bring her to the Keaton wedding?”

“Hell no!” Nate all but shrieked. At Lexi’s bemused smirk he explained, “She’s in a different place than I am.”

“Meaning she wants you in her bedroom?”

“Meaning,” Nate said with a sigh, trying to come up with what he meant, “she wants things I’m not sure I can provide.”

The word bedroom only conjured up the image of Amelia Marlow. In retrospect, he did have her phone number and knew how to take the first step. Beside him Lexi pretended to sway. Her fruity pink drink sloshed onto the bar top.

“Nathaniel Reyes does not have the right stuff to give a woman?”

The other women lingering around the two of them began gawking at him with their brows raised. “Keep your voice down.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said teasing, “we don’t want the bidding ladies to think the merchandise is broken.”

Nate fought against the impulse to cover his groin as all eyes went toward his lower half. “Will you keep your voice down?”

“Oh, trust me, I don’t think anything will stop a bidding war. As a matter of fact, I heard some of the ladies in the church choir comment on how they’ve pooled their money together and are going to divide up your weeklong stay amongst them.”

“What did your future fiancé get me into?”

“A sleazy way to do a good cause,” Lexi joked.

Nate turned to her and grabbed her arm. “You’ve got to do me a favor. Lexi, I need you to bid on me.”

“I didn’t bring any cash.” Lexi stretched her eyes wide with such surprise, Nate believed her.

“I will give you everything in my wallet.” Nate reached for his back pocket but a heavy hand patted his arm down. He turned in time to see his smug big brother grinning.

“You’re not trying to get my lady to buy you?” Stephen asked, siding up to Lexi with a protective arm around her waist. “You wouldn’t want to start any rumors, would you?”

Tight-lipped, Nate shook his head back and forth. Lexi had spent most of her life dealing with rumors about herself, her family and her brother-in-law. Being born a blonde to a family of brunettes was enough to get the townspeople talking. The former beauty queen had had to deal with vicious lies about relationships and of course the clincher—when she left the pageant world and her parents turned their backs on her. Nate admired Lexi. “Funny, considering you’re the one who—”

“Another round for my brother!” Stephen interjected himself verbally and physically. He tapped the top of the bar for attention, probably to avoid Nate bringing up the unfortunate topic of how he’d met Lexi. “What are you drinking? Beer or cognac?”

“He ordered a beer,” Lexi said, saddling up to Stephen, “but Philly’s teacher down there sent this drink over.”

Kill me now, Nate thought.

Amused, Stephen saluted Brittany down at the other end of the bar. “A potential buyer? Nate, dance with the woman so she can see what she might be getting.”

“Man, in a minute I’m leaving this place.”

“You can’t go now,” Lexi wailed. “Think of the children.”

“I’m rich, Lexi,” Nate countered with a cocky smile. “I will write a check for a sizable amount.”

Another hand snaked around his free arm. Nate turned to the side and flashed a grin at Donna Jean, secretary of the First Baptist Church. She took notes for the pastor and all the board meetings, but in the bedroom, she loved to give dictation. He bent close to give her a side hug.

“You’re not thinking about backing out?” Donna said with a wicked grin. Her long nails slipped under his jacket and drew circles down the center of his back. “I emptied my savings account.”

“Donna Jean!” Lexi gasped.

“What? I know what I’m getting and I’m not about to let this one slip through my fingers.” Donna Jean’s note-taking fingers slipped down to pinch his bottom.

Nate tried not to make an obvious gesture to get out of the way. He chuckled and drained his beer. “Well, if you all will excuse me, I think I’ll go check out my competition.”

Never before had he felt so much like a piece of meat. As he made his way toward the stage, women reached out to whisper in his ears how much money they were willing to spend in order to buy him. If only he had someone he trusted to make the purchase. Too bad a majority of the women in attendance tonight had already sampled a bit of him. It appeared as if every woman he’d told about his no-commitment rule was willing to accept forty hours of his time.

As if to make matters worse, Stephen slapped him on the tail before Nate entered the lionesses’ den and shouted, “No competition here, little brother.”

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