The Sweetgum Ladies Knit for Love - By Beth Pattillo Page 0,60
don’t mean me. I mean your life in Sweetgum. Your home. Your roots.”
“I’m trying to escape my roots. Why aren’t you?” She leaned back and waved a hand toward the theater. “Don’t you want to get away from that kind of thinking? That kind of prejudice?”
Dante shook his head. “That kind of stupidity is why I came back to Sweetgum. People can be ignorant there, spiteful even, but they know me. They see me as Dante, not an anonymous black man they can hate on. I’ve never experienced that kind of racism in Sweetgum. People being jerks? Yeah. That kind of pure, evil hate? No.”
Camille didn’t have an answer to this.
Dante put a hand on her shoulder and gave it a brief caress. “We better get going or we’ll miss our reservation.”
The thought of food, even a meal as upscale as the one they were sure to eat at the Watermark, made her feel queasy.
“Maybe we’d better—”
“No.” He was abrupt but not rude. “I refuse to let someone like that ruin our date.”
Camille knew he was right. The minute you let a hater affect your decisions, you were under his power, had let him influence you.
“Then we’d better get going,” she said. “I looked at the menu online last night, and I already know what I want.” She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, surprised to find tears. She hadn’t even known she was crying.
Dante smiled at her with approval. “That’s my girl.”
And for once, Camille didn’t argue with his assumption.
Esther hadn’t intended to be home when the prospective buyer showed up to look at her house the day after Thanksgiving. She’d been coached by her real estate agent on all the dos and don’ts, and the seller’s presence in the home was a definite faux pas.
But the dog—Well, the dog was no more under control now than he’d been the day she dragged him into the veterinary clinic.
The doorbell rang a second time. Esther stood in the middle of the foyer, torn between going after the dog and answering the summons. “Ranger!” she bit out one last time, hoping he would respond, but no such luck. With a shake of her hair and a quick straightening of the hem of her sweater, she moved to answer the door.
The man standing on her front porch was the last person in the world she expected to see.
“Dr. McCullough!” She said his name in the same tone of voice she’d used to try to summon Ranger. Then she collected herself, forced a smile, and responded in a far gentler tone. “Hello.”
“Esther.” From the way his eyes widened, she guessed he was every bit as surprised to see her as she was to see him. “I’m sorry, I must have the wrong—”
“Are you meeting a real estate agent?” He nodded, and her chest tightened. Of all the luck. “Then you’re at the right place.”
For some reason, her pulse was racing. She couldn’t think why, except that Brody McCullough had seen too much in their last two encounters, and what he’d seen made her feel nervous. And vulnerable. And more than anything in the world, Esther disliked feeling vulnerable.
“Please come in. I wasn’t supposed to be here, but I was having a little trouble—”
As if on cue, Ranger came racing through the foyer, his paws skidding on the slick surface before he crashed to a stop at Brody’s feet.
“Hey, boy.” The vet reached down to rub the dog’s head. He looked up at Esther with an apologetic smile. “I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy.”
“You’re in the market for a house?”
Of course he was, she scolded herself. The man was new in town.
But Brody shook his head. “No. I’m renting a condo at the lake.” He suddenly looked uncomfortable, and Esther had no idea what to make of that. “I have a friend, a college buddy, who’s moving to the area. He’s the one looking for a house.”
Esther glanced at her watch. “I’d better be going. Leave you all to look things over in peace.” She reached down and grabbed Ranger’s collar. “Just let me get him on the leash.”
But Ranger didn’t want to be dragged so ignominiously from Brody’s presence. He hunched down, his backside practically sinking through the floor. The tile was slick, but Esther still struggled to tow the animal’s dead weight across the floor.
“Wait. You’re going to hurt your back.” Brody reached out and curled his fingers around Esther’s wrist.