Homecoming Read online

  What he’d seen of Hillsboro, he liked. It was small, its inhabitants were friendly, and the pace was slow enough to lend it a laid-back ambiance. What he liked most was that it was wholly Southern in character, because his Southern roots ran deep: he had relatives whose families had been native Floridians for four generations.

  The house he’d commissioned an architectural firm to design was now complete. It was reminiscent of an historic Mississippi mansion. A pillared front, low-pitched roof, recessed entry, and intricate railings identified the structure as true Southern-style Greek Revival.

  He’d moved to Hillsboro last August, and it was now the first week in June and he’d lived in his house for two weeks. The contracting crew had put the final touches on painting the exterior a week before, while the landscaper had completed the gardens his older sister, Regina Spencer, had designed for him.

  Tyler had been anxious to move in because he’d been living in a tiny one-bedroom cottage behind a bed-and-breakfast for nine months. Several times a week he took his breakfast at the B&B, but had made it a practice to prepare his own dinner in the cottage’s tiny utility kitchen. After working an average of ten hours a day, six days a week, he coveted his privacy.

  Coming over a slight rise now, he spied the two-story plantation house gleaming whitely in the brilliant sun. Slowing his pace, he made his way across a path of rose-pink bricks laid out in a herringbone pattern. Taking long strides, he mounted three steps to a solid oak door painted a distinctive sapphire blue that matched the shutters framing the windows. Wiping his feet on a mat, he unlocked the front door at the same time the cell phone clipped to the waistband of his jeans chimed softly.

  A slight frown lined his smooth forehead. The only time his phone rang that early was when his service called him. And that usually meant a summons to the county hospital for the delivery of a baby.

  Slipping the phone off his waist, he stared at the numbers showing on the display, his frown fading. The area code and number were familiar. Pressing the TALK button, he said softly, “Yes?”

  A husky feminine voice came through the earpiece. “Have you deleted hello from your vocabulary?”

  “Of course not, Mom. What do I owe the honor of hearing your mellifluous voice so early in the morning?” It was five A.M. Central Time. He could always identify his mother’s sultry voice.

  “I just hung up with Arianna. She and Silah have decided to move to the States.”

  Tyler smiled. His youngest sister had finally married her live-in Moroccan-born dress-designer boyfriend earlier in the year.

  “When?”

  “She says she wants her baby born on American soil.”

  His smile was dazzling. “She’s pregnant?”

  “Yes. She found out last week. At thirty-seven, she’s a little anxious about the baby.”

  “Even though she’s now in the high-risk category, she shouldn’t worry too much.”

  “That’s what I told her,” Parris Cole said. “But I didn’t try to dissuade her from coming back home. Just for once I’d like one of my grandchildren to be born in the United States.” Her eldest daughter, Regina Cole Spencer, lived in Bahia, Brazil, and although Regina’s son and daughter had elected to come to the States for their higher education, Parris still had not gotten to see them grow up.

  “Have they decided where they’re going to live?”

  “I’ve offered them the house in Fort Lauderdale. Your father couldn’t understand why I refused to let him sell that house until now. Arianna was ecstatic when I told her she could have the property.”

  Martin and Parris Cole had relocated to West Palm Beach, where they’d taken up permanent residence at the Cole family ancestral estate to care for Martin’s 101-year-old mother.

  “At least she’s coming home to something familiar.”

  Tyler loved the house where he’d grown up with his two sisters. The sprawling beachfront property was airy, always filled with brilliant Florida sunshine, and exquisitely decorated by Parris Simmons-Cole. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d begun his day with a swim in the Atlantic Ocean. An Olympic gold medal winner, Arianna Cole-Kadir had preferred swimming in the ocean to the family’s pool.

  “You’re right, Tyler,” Parris continued. “After Arianna and Silah are settled in, I’m going to throw a little something to welcome her home.”

  “Let me know when it is, Mom, and I’ll be there. It’s going to be exciting to have another new baby in the family.”

  Parris’s smoky laugh floated through the earpiece. “At least for your father and me. It’s been twenty years since we’ve had a grandchild. Speaking of grandchildren, have you found that special someone, Tyler?”

  His smile faded. “No, Mother.”

  “Don’t you dare Mother me, Tyler Simmons Cole. I don’t intend to go to my grave worrying about you spending the rest of your life as a lonely old man.”

  “I’m not old,” he countered, his soft voice hardening slightly. And I’m not lonely, he added silently.

  “You’re forty-one, Tyler. It’s time you settled down.”

  He rolled his eyes, even though he knew his mother couldn’t see him. It was always the same argument. His mother wanted him married.

  “Dad was forty when he married you,” Tyler said.

  “Your father and I had had a child when we married. And if circumstances had been different, we would’ve married ten years before. We had an excuse. What’s yours?”

  “I don’t have one and I don’t intend to make up one. When I find that special woman, then I’ll gladly give up my bachelor status.”

  Parris emitted a delicate snort. “You’ll find her.”

  “Do you want to make a bet?” he teased.

  “Yes. I get to name your firstborn.”

  “You’re on.” His smile was back in place.

  Even if his mother wagered one-half her personal wealth, she still would probably come up a loser. Unlike his sisters, he did not want to marry. He loved medicine, finding it a jealous mistress. He wasn’t a monk, but there also hadn’t been a lot of women in his past. Most of them had realized that even though they were willing to compete with another woman, there was no way they could compete with his profession. But if he did find that special woman, then he would be forced to reassess his priorities. Promising his mother he would call her more often, Tyler ended the call.

  Stepping into the expansive entryway, he stared up at the recently hung light fixture as lit filtered golden light onto the parquet floor, which was laid out in the same herringbone design as the path leading up to the house. Smiling, he removed his sunglasses. His interior-designer mother’s taste was impeccable. Parris had selected the light fixtures, patterns for the wallpaper, window treatments, rugs, and most of the furnishings.

  Once he’d notified his family that he was going to build his first home, his mother and sister had conferred with each other long-distance, offering their professional services to the confirmed bachelor. He’d agreed with all their suggestions and recommendations. His sole focus was offering pregnant women adequate prenatal care, not decorating.

  A mechanical engineer had divided the house into four heating and cooling zones, each regulated by separate controls. Even the detached three-suite guest house claimed its own system.

  The four-bedroom, six-bath main house, set on thirty acres, claimed more space than one person needed, but Tyler looked forward to hosting several holiday celebrations for his sisters, niece, nephew, in-laws, and countless cousins.

  Closing the door, he gloried in the cool air sweeping over his face and body, temporarily forgetting the bet he’d just made with his mother.

  Two

  Dana spied the road sign pointing the way to Hillsboro’s business district, and smiled. She hadn’t bothered to turn on the air-conditioning in her grandmother’s car despite the sultry heat. She breathed in a lungful of hot air. What she had remembered most about her place of birth was the smell. Hillsboro had a scent all its ow
n, and she hadn’t yet figured out whether it was the sap from the pine trees or the Mississippi River. Whatever it was, it evoked a feeling of nostalgia in her for the first time since her return.

  After sleeping twelve consecutive hours, she’d awakened alert and refreshed for the first time in days. Eugene Payton had yet to call her, and for that she was grateful. She’d been numbed by the news of her grandmother’s unexpected death from a massive heart attack. It had happened a day before Georgia was scheduled to leave Mississippi for New York for their scheduled summer reunion. And for the first time in more than two decades, Georgia Sutton would not spend the months of June, July, and August with her granddaughter.

  Within minutes, downtown Hillsboro came into view. The storefronts that had lined two square blocks had undergone a transformation. The two blocks had expanded to four as fast-food restaurants now competed with an eating establishment that had catered to generations.

  Shops with new facades, awnings, and attractive window displays silently advertised the latest fashions, fads, and household gadgets. The movie theater had become a duplex, showing two movies simultaneously; the tiny, crowded hardware store had disappeared, replaced by a Home Depot, and the small functional supermarket had expanded to an impressive Publix superstore.

  Tiny, sleepy Hillsboro had joined the twenty-first century, claiming Staples, Barnes and Noble, Eckerd’s, and Target.

  Making a right turn into an area behind a row of stores, she maneuvered a space at the rear of Smithy’s Family Diner. Anyone who’d lived in Hillsboro could be counted on to eat at Smithy’s at least once during their lifetime, and Dana had lost count of the number of breakfasts, dinners, ice cream sodas, and banana splits she’d been served at the family-style restaurant.

  She and her girlfriends had crowded into booths in the rear on late Saturday afternoons, after they’d left the movie house. They’d devoured monstrous ice cream concoctions as they waited for their parents or older siblings to drive them home.

  Dana had always asked her father to come for her, because he did not scold her about the girls she’d befriended. It was Alicia Nichols who’d lectured her that, as a Nichols, she should not consort with riffraff, that she was better than the people who lived across the railroad tracks.

  And what had confused Dana, even though she’d never verbalized it, was that her mother had grown up across the tracks, and her grandmother still lived across the tracks.

  Georgia Sutton had reprimanded Alicia, claiming she was being too hard on Dana; that she was over-compensating, that the people she’d grown up with were decent, hardworking, and God-fearing folks. Alicia never argued with her mother, but nothing Georgia said to Alicia could make her change her opinion of those she deemed beneath her.

  Turning off the engine to the ten-year-old Chevy Lumina, Dana opened the door and stepped out of the car. She hadn’t taken more than two steps when she noticed a man blocking her way.

  He extended a grimy palm. “You got money for coffee?”

  Eyes narrowing, she stared at the dirty young man. The odor emanating from his unwashed body in the stifling heat nearly gagged her. He was several inches taller than she was, but she doubted whether he outweighed her. A filthy white T-shirt and ragged jeans hung off his emaciated frame. His long dreaded hair was littered with lint and particles of leaves and twigs. Dark eyes, in an equally dark face, glittered wildly. Each time he exhaled, she caught a whiff of his malodorous breath.

  “You got a quarter?” His voice was louder, stronger, as his hands curled into tight fists.

  It wasn’t the first time Dana had been approached by a panhandler, but it was the first time she’d felt threatened by one. She debated whether to open her purse and give him some money, or try to escape him.

  “Are you bothering the lady, Leon?”

  Dana let out her breath in an audible sigh when she heard a soft, drawling male voice behind her.

  The panhandler’s aggressive stance dissipated within seconds. Lowering his head, he mumbled, “No, sir. I want coffee.”

  “Didn’t I tell you not to bother the ladies?” the soft voice continued. “That if you want coffee you should come and see me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to go back home, take a shower, put on clean clothes, and then come see me.”

  Leon shook his head, his gaze shifting between Dana, who hadn’t moved, and the tall man standing behind her.

  “She your lady?”

  “Yes, Leon, she’s my lady. Now will you please do as I ask?”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “Go home, Leon.” The soft voice had taken on a sharp edge of authority.

  The disturbed man’s eyelids blinked rapidly. “You want Leon go home and then come back?”

  “Yes, Leon. Then come back and see me.”

  Leon dropped his head, turned, and shuffled slowly through a walkway between two stores. It was only after he’d disappeared from sight that Dana turned and looked up at her rescuer, her breath halting momentarily before starting up again.

  The man staring down at her was literally and figuratively tall, dark, and handsome—almost beautiful, and never had she ever attributed that adjective to any man. His close-cropped hair was a shimmering black and liberally feathered with gray. She leisurely studied his face, feature by feature. His smooth deeply tanned olive coloring and high cheekbones made him look exotic. Sweeping black silky eyebrows curved over a pair of large glossy dark eyes. A thin nose and full sensual mouth completed his startling, arresting face.

  “Thank … thank you, Mr. …” she stuttered, recovering her voice. It had come out in a breathless sigh.

  “Cole, Tyler Cole.”

  It was Tyler’s turn to stare at the woman who looked as good from the front as she did from the back. His obsidian gaze lingered on her face. And what an exquisite face it was: delicate chin, full, lush mouth, a pert nose, and then there were her eyes—eyes that were large, oval, and a clear warm brown with glints of gold that reminded him of tortoise-shell. The light brown, gold-streaked hair swept up off her slender neck was a perfect match for her eyes.

  His lazy, penetrating gaze caressed the outline of her slender body under the sleeveless white cotton blouse she’d paired with a slim black skirt, ending at her knees, and black leather sandals. He forced himself not to gawk at the perfection of her bare legs and slender feet. As a man who had lost count of the number of women he’d examined since becoming a doctor, Tyler Cole was stunned by the beauty of the strange woman in front of him.

  She smiled, extending her right hand. “Dana Nichols.”

  A slow smile crinkled Tyler’s eyes as he flashed his trademark dimples, displaying a set of perfectly aligned white teeth. His parents had spent a small fortune in orthodontic care to correct an overbite from a thumb-sucking habit he’d developed from birth. It wasn’t until he’d entered the third grade that he had come to the realization that sucking his thumb was for babies.

  He arched an expressive raven eyebrow, taking her hand in his, cradling it gently. Her palm was soft and cool. He glanced down at her fingers. The nails were polished a pale pink—an attractive contrast to her tanned golden skin. So, he thought, she was the one who had tongues wagging faster than a hummingbird flapping its wings.

  “I’m sorry if Leon frightened you,” he said.

  “I don’t think he frightened me as much as he startled me,” Dana said, extracting her hand from Tyler Cole’s loose grip. “When I got out of my car, I didn’t expect to see him standing in front of me.”

  “He’s been warned about asking women for money.”

  She anchored the strap to her purse over her shoulder. “Is he a relative of yours?”

  Tyler smiled again. “No, he isn’t.”

  “Thank you again, Mr. Cole.”

  He nodded. “You’re welcome, Ms. Nichols.”

  Tyler watched Dana walk from the parking lot, and then followed her. It wasn’t until he reached the front door to Smithy’s
that he realized they were going to the same restaurant.

  Reaching over her head, he held the door open. She smiled up at him. “You can really thank me by sharing breakfast, Ms. Nichols.”

  Tyler had no idea why he’d asked Dana to have breakfast with him, but the words were out and he could not retract them.

  Dana’s smile widened. “Okay. But only if I treat,” she added quickly.

  “No.”

  Dana stared at the tall man towering over her by more than half a foot. She was five-six, and estimated he had to be at least six-three. The top of her head reached his shoulder.

  A slight frown appeared between her golden eyes. “No?”

  “I can’t permit you to pay.”

  She walked into Smithy’s, glancing at Tyler over her shoulder. “Hasn’t a woman ever paid for a meal for you?”

  He held her gaze. “No.”

  “Well, Mr. Cole, this is going to be the first time.” She didn’t intend to owe anyone in Hillsboro anything—not even for a morsel of food.

  “Only if the next one is on me,” Tyler insisted.

  She went completely still. Is that the way it had been with her mother? When she’d asked her grandmother about her mother, Georgia had always said that Alicia had only to smile at a man and they would flock to her like bees to honey. Dana may have looked like her mother, but she wasn’t in Hillsboro to attract men. She was there to investigate a murder.

  “Look, Mr. Cole—”

  “Tyler,” he corrected.

  “Tyler?”

  “Yes, Dana?”

  “I’ve come to Smithy’s to eat breakfast, not debate social etiquette or protocol.”

  She hadn’t eaten in nearly twenty-four hours. She’d prepared an omelet, a slice of toast, and a cup of coffee for herself after she’d returned from burying her grandmother. After cleaning up the kitchen, she’d spent most of the afternoon on the screened-in back porch dozing, before retreating to the bedroom where she’d had slept as a child and falling into a deep sleep that had lasted for hours. She’d awakened several hours before sunrise, disoriented. Lying in bed and waiting for the sun to rise, she’d mentally planned what she needed to do. Dana had one priority—reacquaint herself with Hillsboro, Mississippi.