Free September Morning by Diana Palmer Page A

and the admission was genuine. “Would I fight half my family to drive this distance to pick you up if I hadn't?” she asked.
    “I know. It is a pretty long drive, isn't it? I could have caught a bus…”
    “Don't be silly,” she said, linking her hand with his as they walked toward the baggage conveyor. “How would you like a grand tour of Charleston before we head home? Blake's guests got it, and you're just as entitled…”
    “Guests?” he echoed. “Have I come at an inopportune time?” he asked quickly.
    “Blake's courting a labor union and a woman at the same time,” she said with a trace of bitterness in her tone. “We'll simply keep out of the way. Phillip and Maude and I will take care of you, don't worry.”
    “Blake's the guardian, isn't he?” he asked, pausing to grab his bag from the conveyor as it moved past.
    “That, and a distant cousin. The Hamiltons raised me,” she murmured. “I'm afraid it isn't the best weather for a visit,” she apologized, gesturing toward the rainy gray skies as they stepped outside and walked toward the parking lot. “It's been raining off and on all day and we're expecting some flooding before we're through. Hurricanes really get to us in the low country.”
    “How low is it?” he asked.
    She leaned toward him, taking the cue. “It's so low that you have to look up to see the streets.”
    “Same old Kat,” he teased, using his own nickname for her, and he hugged her close. “It's good to be down south again.”
    “You only say that because you're glad to get away from all that pollution,” she told him.
    He blinked at her. “Pollution? In Maine?” he asked incredulously.
    She batted her eyelashes up at him. “Why, don't you all have smokestacks and chemical waste dumps and bodies floating in the river from gang wars?” she asked in her best drawl.
    He laughed brightly. “Stereotypes?”
    She grinned. “Didn't you believe that we wore white bedsheets to the grocery store and drank mint juleps for breakfast when you first met me?”
    “I'd never known anyone from the south before,” he defended himself as they walked toward her small foreign car. “In fact,” he admitted, “this really is the first time I've spent any time here.”
    “You'll learn a lot,” she told him. “For instance, that a lot of us believe in equality, that most of us can actually read and write, and that…”
    The sky chose that particular moment to open up, and rain started pouring down on them in sheets. She fumbled with her keys, barely getting them into the car in time to avoid a soaking.
    Brushing her damp hair back from her face, Kathryn put the small white Porsche into reverse and backed carefully out of the parking space. It wasn't only due to her drivers’ training course that she was careful at the wheel. When Blake had given her this car for her birthday last year, he'd been a constant passenger for the first week, watching every move she made. When he talked she listened, too, because in his younger days, Blake had raced in Grand Prix competitions all over Europe.
    She swung into gear and headed out of the parking lot onto the busy street.
    “It's raining cats!” She laughed, peering through the windshield wipers as the rain shattered against the metal roof with deafening force. It was hard to see the other cars, despite their lights.
    “Don't blame me.” Larry laughed. “I didn't bring it with me.”
    “I hope it lets up,” she said uneasily, remembering the two bridges they had to cross to get back to King's Fort and on to Greyoaks. When flash floods came, the bridges sometimes were underwater and impossible to cross.
    She saw an opening and pulled smoothly out into it.
    “I see palm trees!” Larry exclaimed.
    “Where did you think you were—Antarctica?” she teased, darting a glance at him. “They don't call us the Palmetto State for nothing. We have beaches in the low country, too, just like Florida.”
    He looked confused. “Low