Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'easter Read online

  Whistlin’ Dixie

  I N A N O R’E A S T E R

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  WHISTLIN’ DIXIE IN A NOR’EASTER. Copyright © 2009 by Lisa Patton. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Patton, Lisa.

  Whistlin’ Dixie in a nor’easter / Lisa Patton.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-4299-5783-0

  1. Women—Southern States—Fiction. 2. Hotelkeepers—Fiction. 3. Bed and breakfast accommodations—Fiction. 4. City and town life—Vermont—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3616.A927 W47 2009

  813'.6—dc22

  2009016845

  First Edition: October 2009

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  eISBN 9781429957830

  To Michael and Will, my true pride and joy.

  And to each and every single mother:

  Go after your dream, no matter how unattainable it may seem.

  Whistlin’ Dixie

  I N A N O R’E A S T E R

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Preview: Southern as a Second Language

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  A Miserable Freezing Cold New Year’s Day

  W I L L I N G H A M, V E R M O N T

  No one ever told me you can’t bury somebody up north in the wintertime.

  So when my little fifteen-year-old Yorkie, Princess Grace Kelly, decided to pick New Year’s Eve to go to doggie heaven, we had a problem. My handyman Jeb had the nerve to tell me that Gracie would have to wait in a shoebox on a garden shed shelf until spring, or the Thaw, as the Vermonters call it. I told him, in no uncertain terms, that I could never make Gracie do that and his solution was simply not an option. I mean, the least I could do was give her a proper burial with a funeral and all, after dragging her 1,473 miles away from home, in her golden years no less, to a place where tee-teeing outside was not an option for her. The first time I ever set her down “to go” on top of the four-foot snowdrift outside our door at the inn, she was nearly buried alive.

  The first thing you need to know about me is that I am not a pushover. I’ll admit to being a little naïve, maybe, but I am no doormat. My girlfriends thought I was a huge doormat, but moving all the way to Vermont changed that forever.

  Anyway, here I was living in subzero Vermont, but bound and determined to get Gracie into that ground. The night before Jeb informed me about this Yankee oddity I had called my best friend Virginia to give her the news about Gracie’s passing. My nose was completely stopped up from crying when I dialed her number at two thirty in the morning, my time.

  “Gracie’s gone,” I wailed into the phone as soon as she answered.

  “What’d you say? I can barely understand you.”

  “PRINCESS. GRACE. KELLY. IS. DEAD,” I screamed.

  “Gosh, Leelee, you scared me. I thought something terrible had happened.”

  “This is terrible.”

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry. When did it happen?”

  “She took her last breath in the middle of New Year’s Eve dinner at the inn. The busiest night of the whole year. It’s all my fault!” I sobbed.

  “It’s all what? You’re gonna have to blow your nose.”

  I reached over for another Kleenex and honked into the phone. “I said . . . it’s all my fault!”

  “What do you mean? Gracie was old, Leelee. It was her time.”

  My bottom lip started to quiver. “She hated it here. And that’s only the beginning. Not only did Gracie just drop dead out of nowhere, but four of my guests at the inn caused a blackout in the middle of dinner.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I wish I was.” I sniffed a few more times. “Then—to top it all off—this couple showed up just before midnight to check in to their room. I didn’t have a room for them, Virginia. I overbooked the inn by mistake and there wasn’t a room to be had in all of southern Vermont.”

  “Wha’d you do then?” Virginia sounded scared for me.

  “I did the only thing I could do. I made room for them.”

  “Oh my gosh, Leelee, this would only happen to you. Don’t tell me they bunked up with y’all.”

  “It’s a long story. Have you got an hour?”

  “I’ve got all the time in the world, but before you get started I wanna know one thing.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “When are you gonna finally give up this ludicrous notion of being the only Southern belle innkeeper in the state of Vermont and come home?”

  “I’m always thinking about home, Virgy. Always.”

  Chapter One

  A Wonderful Hot July Evening

  M E M P H I S, T E N N E S S E E

  Memphis is my home. It always will be no matter where I live. In the South we have a tendency to be possessive of our hometowns. A Memphis girl can marry a Birmingham boy, raise her family there, and live out the rest of her days in Alabama. But when her obituary runs in the Birmingham Post-Herald, it will still claim Memphis as her home.

  The only other place I’d spent any time at all was Oxford, Mississippi. Going to college at Ole Miss was more like “a four-and-a-half-year vacation,” according to Daddy. But the point is, I had no desire to ever leave my home again. I was perfectly happy.

  Memphis gives me a peaceful feeling just thinking about it. Downtown sits way up on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi. The city itself is as flat as a pancake, which makes it the most beautiful place in the world to watch the sunset. Pinks, reds, yellows, and oranges streak the sky and you can watch the entire fireball melt into the cotton fields of Arkansas right across the river.

  When you drive down parts of Poplar Avenue with the windows rolled down and smell barbecue cooking, it’s impossible not to turn into Corky’s or Little Pig’s for a sandwich. Daddy would order his “white pig strictly lean.” I order mine the same way all because of him.

  If you come to Memphis it would be well worth your while to visit in the springtime. Azaleas and dogwoods color the town white, pink, and red as far as the eye can see. It’s nice and warm, with the temperature hovering between seventy-five and eighty-five degrees. I know people say
the summer is sweltering, but it never bothers me.

  Probably our biggest brag is Elvis. Everybody over the age of thirty has some sort of an Elvis story, whether it’s driving by Graceland and seeing him in his front yard or knowing somebody who knew one of his stepbrothers personally—or even still, knowing someone who went to his doctor, Dr. Nick. Elvis drove a truck for Daddy once before he was famous. That’s our claim to Elvis fame.

  I fell in love with a Memphis boy when I was sixteen years old and married him eight years later. I first had a huge crush on him way back in the tenth grade. Baker Satterfield hardly knew I was on this earth until my bosoms finally popped out our senior year in high school. I went from an A-cup to a D-cup in nine months. No wonder I attracted his attention.

  At our graduation party Baker spent most of the evening trying to flirt with me. He ignored his date and threw popcorn at me and pinched my butt, very sneakily, every chance he could. But too bad for him. I had a date with one of his best friends, Jimmy Hudson. Jimmy Hudson didn’t ignore me and I certainly didn’t ignore him. When we weren’t talking or slow dancing . . . we were making out. I’d have one eye shut and the other slightly open trying to see if Baker was watching us. Without fail, he’d be boring a hole right in our direction. So I’d lay it on extra thick. I’d start giggling at whatever Jimmy said and run my hands through his hair or kiss him playfully on the neck.

  You should have seen the way I gloated when I got home that night, just thinking about finally having one up on Baker Satterfield. It served him right for overlooking me just because my chest was flat. Baker told me later that he spent four frustrating years at the University of Tennessee dreaming about my newly blossomed bosoms.

  We met up again after college graduation, and two years later his dreams were nestled right next to him every night in Memphis. As far as I was concerned they could stay nestled that way forever. But when Baker decided to chase another dream, my life was transformed almost overnight from an unswerving line onto a collision course at the Indy 500.

  The evening Baker shared his new dream with me occupies a permanent place in my memory. He was in a terrific mood, like he’d just hit a hole in one on the back nine at the country club with all his buddies watching. He was whistling and snapping his fingers and sliding his loafers across the kitchen floor as he helped me clear the dinner table. Normally he would have had the remote control in his hand by this time, flipping through the channels for any show remotely connected to sports. He never actually sat down to watch until the kitchen was clean. He’d stand in front of the TV like he was pausing just to get the score. “I’ll be right there, honey. Hold on. Scores up next,” he’d shout from the den. But I always knew what he was doing.

  I was an all-sports widow. What really gets me is there is never a break from sports. In the summer it’s baseball, which slides into fall, overlapped by football, which passes into basketball before anyone has a chance to breathe. Football and basketball run side by side for a while, and as if that’s not enough, golf has to iron its way in between the two every Saturday and Sunday afternoon.

  But this particular July night, he never even turned on the TV. He took Gracie out for an evening stroll instead of opening the back door and letting her run outside for her final potty break. I was reading to the girls when Baker returned from the walk and popped his head into their bedroom.

  “Honey.” There was a hush to his voice. “Come on out to the porch when you’re done. I’m making peach daiquiris.”

  “Peach daiquiris. Yum. What’s the occasion?”

  “No occasion, really, I just thought you’d be in the mood for a daiquiri, as hot as it’s been lately.”

  “Can I have one, too?” Sarah, our not-quite-five-year-old, said, perking up.

  Baker stood in the doorway and blew her a kiss. “Not tonight. It’s already past your bedtime. But I’ll make a special one just for you tomorrow night.”

  “But I want one today, Daddy.” She sat straight up with a pout. Sarah takes after her father—thick and wavy dark hair and indigo eyes.

  “Tomorrow. Look, your sister is already asleep, and if you don’t go fast Mr. Sandman will be visiting Isabella before you.” Two-and-a-half-year-old Issie was on the side of the bed next to the wall, already conked out.

  Sarah plopped back down, buried her face in her pillow, and put her arm around me.

  “ ’Night, Sarah,” Baker said, in a teasing way. When she wouldn’t answer him he turned to me. “I’ll meet you outside when you’re done.”

  “I’ll just be a few more minutes.”

  Baker gave me that look. That incredibly intoxicating sexy look, his “I want you” look, and walked out of the room.

  We settled on the back-porch swing, swaying back and forth to the croaking rhythm of a toad. Hundreds of lightning bugs danced all around us and the neighborhood dogs chatted with one another in the distance. The daiquiri was sweet, just the way I like it, not too much rum, and with little pieces of peach still large enough to chew.

  “Honey,” Baker said, breaking the silence, as he twisted my curls with his fingers, one at a time, and leered at me with his gorgeous sapphire eyes. “You know what I want? I want our girls to grow up in a place where people still leave their doors unlocked and their car keys in the ignition.”

  “Mmhmm.” I rested my head on his shoulder and pulled my legs up under me onto the swing. “We could move down to Collierville and have room for horses and maybe even a fishing pond for you. Sarah’s been begging for riding lessons. Lots of the girls in her class are taking.”

  I could already see it—nineteenth-century white farmhouse, long driveway, pond on the right, barn on the left, horses running around and daffodils sprinkled everywhere.

  “Yeah, but even better, we could own our own business and have four months out of the year off. I wouldn’t have to travel, and I could help you out a lot more with the girls.” Baker had his arm around me by now, running his hand through my long strawberry-blond hair.

  “That sounds good, baby, but what insurance company closes four months out of the year?” I asked, still sipping on my daiquiri.

  Baker’s tone plummeted to that voice he gets when he’s locked in the bathroom with the Sunday paper and doesn’t want to be disturbed. He moved his arm and looked at me dead-on. “I’m sick of the insurance business. In fact, I’m downright miserable in the insurance business. It’s boring. All I ever do is work, and I’m fed up with spending only two hours a day with my children. Sarah and Isabella are almost five and three, and I feel like I barely know them.”

  I should mention he talks with his hands. Well, we both do, but at this point Baker’s arms were swinging all over the place. “I’m thinking big—something completely different and radical. I say we should get the hell out of here and move somewhere new and exciting like . . . like . . . Vermont!”

  “Baker, please. You’ve been reading too many Orvis catalogs.” Baker has a storeroom off the garage to house his abundant supply of fly-fishing gear, plus every show Bill Dance has ever starred in on video.

  “No, I have not been reading too many Orvis catalogs. Vermont is a wonderful state, and . . . you’re right, it does happen to have some of the best trout fishing in the country. But, there’s virtually no crime at all in Vermont. The way I see it . . . it’s the perfect place to live and raise a family.”

  He might as well have been talking about Yugoslavia—it was just as foreign to me. “Vermont. Vermont!” I bolted straight up from my relaxed position. “You can’t be serious?”

  “I’ve never been more serious in my life.” With that Baker leaped off the swing, almost upsetting my daiquiri, and ran into the house. Before the swing even had a chance to slow down, he was bolting back out the door with his briefcase in one hand and a fresh daiquiri in the other. He plopped back down on the swing, put his drink on the floor beside him, and placed the briefcase on his lap, unsnapping the locks. The briefcase popped open and lying right on top was the latest copy
of North American Inns magazine. He grabbed it, licked his right thumb, and started flipping through the pages. In the back of the magazine one of the pages was dog-eared. “Get ahold of this!” Baker said. He read aloud, with such intense emotion you’d have thought he was auditioning for the role of Hamlet.

  Located in a village setting near two major ski resorts, Vermont’s premier restaurant/inn is for sale. Circa 1700s, the Vermont Haus Inn has nine guest rooms, most with private bath, seven fireplaces, gracious lawns, twenty acres and historic stone walls. This magnificent opportunity includes operating a full-service, high-gross world gourmet–acclaimed restaurant, along with a lifestyle that most people can only dream about.

  He looked over at me with a sanguine face before continuing.

  Mint, mint condition. Superb owners’ quarters. Owners retiring. Price reduced from $555,000.00 to $410,000.00. A must-see for anyone serious about owning a quaint Vermont country inn. Ed Baldwin Agency, 10 Hill Street, Fairhope, Vermont. 1-802-CALL-ED-B.

  He dropped the magazine on his lap, sat back in the swing, and let out a euphoric sigh. “What do you think, honey?” Baker was beside himself with joy. “Look at all we could have in Vermont”—he thumped the page with the back of his hand—“just by selling our house here! Twenty acres, an inn, and a business for not much more than the price of this house.”

  I was stunned. It was the only time in my life that I can honestly say I was truly speechless.