Last Kiss Goodbye

Sometimes she was so lonely.

He released her abruptly and snapped open the September layout she’d completed on Southern romantic rendezvous. “Look at all these places. Maybe if we took a trip together we could kindle the fire between us.”

She glanced down at the rows of pictures she’d scrapbooked for the magazine. Idyllic, charming bed-and-breakfasts in the mountains, the Grand Ole Opry Hotel in Nashville, a cozy inn on the river in New Orleans, the Chattanooga Choo-choo. A deep sadness washed over her. When she’d photographed and finished the layout, she had imagined herself there, walking hand in hand with a lover, making love as the river rushed over rocks nearby. She longed for a companion in life. But as much as she’d tried, she couldn’t imagine that person as George.

“Please just let it go.” She sighed. “I have too much on my mind right now.”

His jaw tightened as he ran a hand over his sandy-blond beard. “I’m beginning to think you’re a cold fish. That you use your past as an excuse so you won’t have to get close to anyone.”

Ivy glared at him. Granted, she hadn’t made a lot of friends, but she wasn’t a cold fish. She needed order to keep the demons at bay. The endless patterns of her day, the routines, the sameness kept her sane and safe.

Get up at seven. Shower. Go to the office. Hit the gym after work for a three-mile run around the track to help her sleep at night. Dinner. Reading. Tea. Bed. Then start it all over the next day, a vicious circle where she was never moving forward, just in a circle like the track.

Sometimes the routines kept the nightmares away. And when those nightmares left her, erotic dreams filled her sleeping hours. Dreams of being touched, loved, caressed by an anonymous dark-haired man. He seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite see his face or discern his features.

If or when she gave her body to a man, he had to be someone she really wanted to be with, a man who made her feel alive and special. A man who moved emotions inside her. A man she could trust enough to share her secrets.

That man wasn’t George.

“I’m sorry.” He sighed, looking frustrated but resigned. “I know you’re still troubled over Miss Nellie’s diary. But if you don’t get over it, Ivy, this magazine is going to fall apart because you’re not focused.”

She swallowed hard. The magazine was her baby, the only thing she’d ever put her heart into. Failure was not an option.

“What do you have planned for the October issue?” George asked. “The deadlines are approaching.”

“I was thinking about featuring Appalachian folklore and ghost stories. That would fit with the Halloween theme.”

He plucked at his beard again as he chewed over the idea. “That could work. Do you have a specific place in mind?”

“Kudzu Hollow.”

He frowned. “I thought Miss Nellie convinced you not to go back there.”

The television droned in the background, but Ivy froze, momentarily caught off guard when a special news segment flashed on the screen. Abram Willis, the lawyer who’d been working on Matt Mahoney’s case, appeared in front of a massive stone, columned structure, a flock of reporters on his heels. The courthouse in Nashville.

A tall man with thinning hair and a tanning-bed-bronzed complexion stopped in front of the lawyer, blocking his exit. “This is Don Rivers reporting to you from C & N News. We have a live interview with Abram Willis, the nationally acclaimed attorney, currently fighting to free falsely accused prisoners.”

“Ivy—”

“Shh.” She pushed past George and turned up the volume, her eyes glued to the set, her adrenaline churning. The distinguished attorney paused to address the group, absentmindedly straightening his tie, which matched his streaked gray hair. But it was the man beside him who captured Ivy’s attention.

Well over six feet tall with jet-black hair, and eyes so dark brown they looked black. His powerful body exuded pure raw masculinity, as well as bitterness and anger. The scar that zigzagged down his left cheek added an air of brutality that bordered on frightening. But something about his darkness drew her, made her wonder if he really was the hard, cold man he appeared on the surface. Pain radiated from his body, and his eyes held such deep sadness that Ivy literally trembled with compassion.

For a fleeting second, another image passed through the far recesses of her brain, the image of Matt Mahoney as a teenager. He’d been fierce, angry, frightening. But all the teenage girls had wanted him, had whispered about the girls he’d taken in the back of his daddy’s ’75 Chevy.

Now he looked exhausted, half-dead from defeat. Yet a small spark lit his eyes—relief at his sudden and unexpected freedom.

“Mr. Willis, is it true that the court overturned the ruling on Mr. Mahoney’s murder conviction?” Rivers asked. “That he spent fifteen years in jail for a crime that evidence now proves he didn’t commit?”

Willis nodded, puffing up his chest as he straightened his suit jacket, but Matt averted his face as if shying away from the camera. “That’s correct,” the attorney said. “Justice has finally been served. Mr. Mahoney has been cleared of charges and has been pardoned.”

The reporter shoved a microphone in Matt’s face. “Mr. Mahoney, tell us how it feels to be free.”

“What are you going to do now?” another reporter shouted.

A chorus of others followed. “Are you receiving monetary retribution for the past fifteen years?”

“Are you going home?”

“If you didn’t kill that family, do you know who did?”

Ivy pressed her hand to her mouth, waiting for his answer. But Matt scowled at the camera, pushed the microphone away with an angry swipe of his hand and stalked through the crowd without responding.

“What the hell is it, Ivy?” George said, sliding his hand to her waist. “You act like you’ve seen a ghost.”

She gestured toward the screen with a shaky hand, the black hole of her past threatening to swallow her. “That’s the man who was convicted of killing my parents.”

MATT INHALED THE CRISP fall air as he walked away from the courthouse, barely noting that the smells of grass, honeysuckle and clean air that he’d craved were missing, that the city with its concrete buildings and sidewalks had destroyed those things, just as prison had decimated his dignity. Goddamn bloodsucking reporters. He’d half wanted to use them as a tool to vent his case, since they’d sure as hell done a number on him years ago. But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.

And what could he say?

That he was bitter. That he hated the system that had failed him. That he despised the citizens who still stared at him as if he was guilty. That he wished he had a nice home to go to. Someone waiting on him. A family. A loving wife or lover. Anyone who cared about him. A future.

He didn’t.

In fact, going home meant facing the very people who’d condemned him. The neighbors and family who’d gossiped about his family, testified against his character, thrown him away and forgotten about him.

The ones who believed he was a murderer.

But he would face them, anyway. Because someone in Kudzu Hollow knew the truth about the Stanton slayings and had allowed him to take the fall.

One last glance at the columns of the courthouse and its stately presence, and he remembered all he’d learned in prison. Laws varied, depending on a person’s financial status. For the poor, the old adage “innocent until proven guilty” didn’t matter one iota. In fact, it was the opposite—you were guilty from the beginning, and nothing you said made a damn bit of difference. From the moment the sheriff had slapped handcuffs on him, Matt had been labeled a killer. Not one person in Kudzu Hollow had spoken up to defend him.

Then in prison…hell, everyone screamed they were innocent. He’d had a hard time telling the difference himself. He’d met men bad to the bone, some meaner and more depraved than he’d ever imagined. But other innocents like him, convicted by bad cops, seedy lawyers, piss-poor judges and shoddy crime scene techs, filled the cells, too. Trouble was, once the prisoners were all thrown in there together, fighting for survival took priority.

And they all became animals.

Sweat beaded his forehead at the memory of the acts he’d committed in the name of survival.

His life would never be the same. He’d lost his youth, and for a while his chance for an education, although the last few years he’d pulled himself together and had been studying the law. One day soon, he’d obtain his license and take the bar exam. Become a respectable citizen and prove to the world that it had been wrong about him. Maybe he’d even work with Willis to help free other innocents.

Matt’s chest squeezed, though, as he climbed into the lawyer’s black Cadillac. Now only one thing drove him—bittersweet revenge on the man responsible.

If only he knew his identity.

That fateful night raced back as Willis drove through Nashville, Matt’s mind wandering back in time as the sea of cars and traffic noises swirled around him.

Fifteen years ago, he’d been up to no good, stealing tires from the junkyard, when he’d spotted that little Stanton girl running for her life. Hell, he’d felt sorry for the kid. They’d both grown up in the trailer park that backed up to the junkyard. He knew the kind of life she had. Had heard folks in town gossiping that her mother liked the men, that if she wasn’t married she’d be shacked up in one of Talulah’s Red Row trailers making money on her back. And some said that she did spend her days there with her legs spread wide, entertaining customer after customer while her old man sold car parts and pedaled junk for a living. And Matt had finally learned that was true, although he wasn’t proud of the way he’d found out.