Simple Gone South (Crimson Romance) Read Online Free

that house anymore. Hadn’t in a long time.
    For the most part, they had traded dining rooms for restaurants, with the occasional patio thrown in.
    Today Brantley would be having lunch with his grandmother and father at the house where he had been born to Charles and Eva Brantley Kincaid—though the dining room was off limits there too. When he and his dad occasionally ate at that house it was always on TV trays in front of the television, but Big Mama was not the type to take a meal on a TV tray.
    Sure enough, he found them on the back patio where Charles was grilling steaks and Big Mama was nursing a mint julep and gazing out at the golf course. The wrought iron table was set with a tablecloth and dishes in fall colors. There was even a centerpiece of gourds and Indian corn. That would be Big Mama’s doing. Pull out causal elegant.
We can’t bear to eat at other tables, but the boy is coming home.
We have to Do Right.
    For a few seconds he watched them, thinking their separate lonely thoughts and living their separate lonely lives. He put on his happy Brantley mask before speaking.
    “Hey,” he said. And he watched two faces swing toward him and morph into pure, unadulterated joy.
    Being the recipient of such undeserved love could be a hard job.
    Big Mama was the first to reach him. She was classy, tall, and gracefully thin with a white chin length bob. She hardly fit the connotation that
Big Mama
mustered up. She looked more like a Grandmere or Mimi, but Brantley women were always Big Mama to their grandchildren.
    Brantley’s children, if he had any, would not have anyone to call Big Mama.
    “Darling! You look wonderful.”
    He kissed her cheek. “Not so good as you.”
    Then he went from thin reaching arms to strong hands clasping his shoulders. “Let me get you a beer, Son.”
    “Let me get
you
one.” Brantley untangled himself from them and walked toward the small galvanized tub where beer, soft drinks, and bottled water had been iced down. “You’re doing all the work.”
    “Not all.” Charles turned back to the grill. “Miss Caroline brought stuffed mushrooms, twice baked potatoes, and banana pudding.”
    Of course she would have. All his favorites. “Evelyn made the mushrooms and potatoes but I made the pudding myself,” Big Mama said proudly. Evelyn had worked for Big Mama so long that it was hard to tell who was the boss.
    Brantley removed the caps from the beers and passed one to his father. “Nobody makes banana pudding like you,” he told his grandmother. Too late, he wished he hadn’t said that, because at one time, someone else had. But they were so happy to have Brantley there that they didn’t notice his blunder.
    The three of them talked easily over the meal. Charles and Caroline had a lot to tell—the happenings at Christ Episcopal Church, Kincaid Insurance Company, Rotary, Caroline’s bridge club, and what was going on with the citizens of Merritt. They also had a lot to ask. There was no detail of Brantley’s life that they did not seize like it was the last gold nugget ever mined.
    As they finished their pudding, Big Mama said tentatively, “Darling?” and raised her iced tea glass to her lips.
    Brantley leaned in and raised his eyebrow.
    “You aren’t going back tonight are you?” she asked.
    It was a valid question. It was only a three hour trip from Nashville to Merritt and he’d been known to do a turn around visit in one day a couple of times. Okay, more than a couple; he’d done the turn around trip more times than he’d spent the night.
    “No, not this time. It seems I am to dance attention on Missy not only at the actual Follies but at some big to-do at the club after. I thought I’d spend the night.” He looked at his father. “If that’s okay, Dad.”
    Charles Kincaid smiled so gratefully that Brantley could have wept, if he was a weeper, which he was not. “I think I can endure your presence for a day or so,” he said lightly.
    “Well.” Big Mama