Almost Southern (excerpt the third)

A loud banging on the door brought Glory straight up out of the depths of one of the most sensual dreams she'd ever had. She struggled to ignore the loud, insistent pounding on the door. Tried in vain to escape back into that haze of pleasure that she'd been experiencing before the banging started, to slip back into that soft, warm place where she could hear a sweet voice whisper her name. Finally, Glory realized that trying to grasp those last, willowy wisps of fantasy was futile. The dream had floated away on wings as light as Granny Grace's butter cookies, and all she was left with was a very rude person trying to pound a hole into her front door.

She trudged down the stairs rumpled from sleep, wearing only a pair of men's pajama pants and a tattered Ole Miss t-shirt that could have held three more women her size knotted at her navel, missing her left sock. As she reached the front door and glanced down at her feet, she wondered, as she did every single morning, if there was a magical fairy that slipped into her room in the middle of the night and removed one sock, one left sock, and hid it away in a grove somewhere.

With her right hand firmly grasping the doorknob before giving it a slight twist and tug, Glory was in no way prepared for the sight that greeted her when she flung the door open and grumbled "Alright already. You can quit your banging now."

Standing there on her front porch, in the dead center of Brimstone, Mississippi, wearing a smartly pressed, probably Italian, suit that easily cost twice as much as her car, was a man that sucker punched the air right out of Glory's body in one quick whoosh. And he didn't even have to raise a hand to her to do it.

He quirked a dark brow at the sight of her, noticing how the pajama bottoms rode the curve of her hips. He glimpsed the creamy expanse of skin that her tied shirt exposed. The corners of his mouth, oh Lordy what a mouth, lifted upwards, in the hint of a smile. His eyes sparkled as they roamed her body, taking in every detail, mentally drinking in the sight of her like a man that's been standing too long in a field of cotton on a sweltering August afternoon. His slow perusal of her trembling body took in her missing sock, the cuffs of her bottoms, the knot in her shirt, the bared shoulder from a neckline that was four sizes too big, the wild auburn that framed her startled face, and ended with his emerald eyes settling into a quiet contest of wills with her denim blue eyes.

"Mornin', Glory."

That voice, a blend of rich dark chocolate and sweet smelling cigar smoke, rolled over Glory's senses like the waves of the Gulf of Mexico rolled over the sands of Gulf Shores, smooth, tickling, relaxing. Relentless. Just a hint of danger was there, at the very edges, almost imperceptible. But Glory recognized it immediately. It was a voice from a long time ago, another life really. The voice belonged to someone that knew her, knew every crevice of her body, every hidden corner of her soul. That voice was from her past, a past so hidden and secret, so closely guarded, that not even Pete knew about it. Granny Grace might have suspected, but even she wasn't really sure.

It was the voice from her dream.