Looking Out The Window: Victoria Caine Talks About Her Novel Cotton. Shares Chapter One And Gives Away A Smashwords Link To A Short Story

A Warm Welcome to Victoria Caine

Victoria shares her favorite Bible verse, a Smashwords link to a free short story, "In The Shadow Of My Heart," and the first chapter of Cotton. (See below).

Favorite Bible Verse

Ecclesiastes 3:1 To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.
This verse was a big part of my first novel, Alvarado Gold, available on Amazon

Favorite Recipe

Corn Bread 

1 cup flour

1 cup corn meal

1 teaspoon salt

4 teaspoons baking powder

3 tablespoons sugar

1 ½ cups milk

2 tablespoons melted shorting

1 egg

Mix all ingredients together and bake at 425 degrees until golden brown.

My mother, who is almost 104, wrote on the back of the recipe – Good luck Dear. Eat a piece for me – Love you, Mom

About Cotton

Running from a life of poverty, 16 year old Cotton Ramsey escapes the Savannah River bottomland to New York. Twenty years later, she has changed her name and runs a large pharmaceutical company, which belonged to the family of her late husband. When Beau Simpson, her first love, arrives to deliver the news of her daddy’s untimely death, the life she struggled to leave behind calls her home.

Buy Cotton on Amazon

Bio:

Victoria Pitts Caine is a native Californian and lives in the central portion of the state. Her varied interests include genealogy and exotic gemstone collecting both of which she’s incorporated into her novels.

The author has received recognition in both fiction and nonfiction from: Enduring Romance top 10 picks, William Saroyan Writing Conference, Byline Magazine, Writer’s Journal Magazine, Holt International Children’s Services Magazine, and The Southern California Genealogical Society. Her first novel, Alvarado Gold, was published in 2007 followed by three more as well as novellas and short stories in anthologies.

Victoria is a former staff technician in air pollution control. She is the mother of two daughters. Now retired from the work force, Victoria and her husband enjoy travel, cooking, and are self-appointed “foodies”.

Visit with Victoria on her website
blog
Email: alvaradogold9@gmail.com
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About In the Shadow Of My Heart

Katie and Charlie are star-crossed lovers in the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee in the Civil-War era. Their fathers are bitter enemies but the two teenagers fall in love before Charlie leaves to join the militia after the battle of Shiloh. Charlie begs Katie to wait for him but he never returns.

Smashwords Link to FREE Short Story, In The Shadow Of My Heart

Chapter One of Cotton

Spring, 1980

John Ramsey held the rhythm all morning but now, as the ever-present Georgia sun bleached out the blue of the morning sky, the muscles of his back tightened against the duplications of the hoe. Thrust, pull, thrust, pull, ever mindful of the dark green shoots. A slice into them meant a slice taken away from his life.
He stopped and took the wide-brimmed hat from his head and wiped his brow on his ten-year-old chambray sleeve. This year, he told Claudia not to mend the holes. Come fall there might be enough for a new shirt, but with ten mouths to feed, he doubted it. He cast his eyes to the end of the row of freshly sprouted cotton and to the old clapboard house which rose, it seemed, out of the dust of the field. He’d hoped she’d deliver this thirteenth child soon.
Claudia lay tired and worn when he left her this morning. Thirteen babies in the eighteen years they’d been married had left her spent. But this baby had been different and John wondered if it would join the three others he’d buried on the day they were born. No money for graves or headstones, he laid them into their final sleep back away from the house with gentle care into small pine boxes and dug the holes deep to keep them safe.
A thin, shrill cry came from the house at mid-afternoon and a deluge of emotion ran through him. Pride swelled his chest, happy another child, his child, had entered this world but soon sorrow flooded over him even shame because this child had no more hope than the others or any of them in this place where John now toiled.
He hoped his sons could break away from farming or at least have their own piece of soil. John worried about his daughters, too. He had little to give them but a life much as their mother led, having babies, mending shirts.
Thrust, pull, thrust, pull until the sun made its way across the realm and settled against the edge of that faraway oak tree. The ball hung there to mock him. As the tree grabbed it and refused to let it set, the sky turned to gold and red. A hint of scornful clouds danced between the rays. Thrust, pull, thrust, pull. John turned to make his way back to the house when the oldest, Lizbeth, screamed out to him, “Daddy! Help me!”
John dropped the hoe and ran. Lizbeth stood on the edge of what they called the yard. Not much different from the field around it and scattered with the discards of their life and broken farm tools. A stray yellow dog stood sentry. Lizbeth held out the small squirming bundle to her father. “Mama won’t even look at her.”
Her. A girl. Why couldn’t it have been a boy? John peered at the child with a heavy heart. “What did Mama name her?”
“She won’t give this ’un a name. She won’t feed her neither, Daddy. What do I do?”
John took the baby in his arms. “Go get Miz Magee. She’ll know.”
Lizbeth stood, frozen, and stared at her father.
“Go on, now.”
As his oldest child ran across the plowed field into the near darkness, John placed a gentle kiss on the translucent, blue-tinged skin of the baby’s forehead. He looked around at the fields that framed his existence. “Cotton. Cotton Ramsey,” he said out loud, and that would be her name.

* * *

Thirty-six years later
Camille Richelieu grappled her way from beneath the dark fog that engulfed her. Her senses had awakened, and a sweet gingery smell met her nostrils. She remembered the smell along with the dirt and sweat, memories she had blocked long ago. She opened her eyes, and a man knelt on the floor beside her. Her first thought went to her husband, but she had memorized his every feature. This man wasn’t Michael. Then a cold quick stab to her heart brought back the bleak reminder he had died two years ago.
Her assistant, Judith, stood and wrung her hands behind the man. Focus. I have to focus. I’m on the couch in my office. The cream-colored walls blurred through Camille’s watery vision as she heard Judith say, “I’m so sorry, Ms. Richelieu. I don’t know who he is, and he keeps calling you Cotton.”
Camille bolted upright and the soles of her plum-colored, suede stilettos hit the floor. She had sat up too quickly. The room spun which swirled the blues, browns, and ivory into an unpleasant pallet. The man grabbed Camille to steady her.
“Get your hands off me,” she said through gritted teeth.
In a thick, Southern drawl that pulled Camille back to her childhood, the man crooned, “You never said that when we were back home in the cornfield, darlin’.”
Camille froze. A heat rose from her neck to her hairline yet her arms prickled with gooseflesh. How can I have both these sensations at once? She knew how, and there had only been one man, boy really, who could do that to her. Camille glanced at Judith. “Could you leave us alone?”
“But ma’am…” Judith insisted.
“I’m fine. Close the door and I want no interruptions.” Camille watched Judith cross the room and with a pained expression, she gave her employer one final look.
Camille steadied herself and waited while the memory of her past rushed back through her, the years on the farm in Savannah, the hunger always ate at her backbone and ragged clothes and ill-fitting shoes layered shame further on her young soul. The life she’d run from the day she turned sixteen.
The boy from her memory, now a man, crouched in front of her. She cleared her throat, looked into his green eyes and said, “What on earth do you want, Beau Simpson?”
“Well, that’s a fine way to treat me. I’ve come all the way to New York to bring you home.” Beau’s lips deepened into an irresistible grin, the dimple that creased his left cheek once again intrigued her.
“This is my home, Beau, and has been for quite some time.” She stood and took in a sharp breath. Camille wobbled, and his arm went around her waist. “I told you to get your hands off me.” Her icy stare skimmed over him, then she walked to the window. When she spotted the sleek, black limousine at the curb, the events of earlier that morning replayed in detail.
She had fainted when she first spotted Beau. His thick, black hair and rugged, tanned face had been much the same as it had been when they’d grown up together in that rich bottomland jutting off the Savannah River. Camille observed the driver who stood at near attention on the sidewalk next to the limo. The rear door swung open, and as the occupant removed his six-foot-plus frame from the vehicle, she recognized him. Beau had done well for himself or pretended to. When he closed the distance between them, she had collapsed into his arms.
When she didn’t speak, he broke the silence. “This is a fine office, Cotton. Who do you work for?”
“I don’t work for anyone. I own this company, this high rise and everyone in it including security whom I may just call to have you removed.” She stopped and eyed him. I shouldn’t be so rude. Too many years demanding what I wanted and getting it, I guess. “What is it you want?”
“Cotton, you need to come home… err… back to Savannah.” He moved closer to her, and she took a slight step back. “Something’s happened to John.”
Camille sensed the pinpricks behind her eyes. She swallowed hard and willed herself not to cry. She hadn’t thought about them, any of them, in so long, but she could sense the callused skin of her father’s hand as he caressed her face. The only one who cared for her, helped her grow, kept her from the switch in her mother’s hands and the hurtful taunts of the other nine. He had named her Cotton, and the solitary regret she had for leaving Georgia laid in her heart for her father.
“What…?” she said loudly and Judith cracked the door open. Camille shook her head and the sound of the wooden door against the jamb caused her to jump. “Is he all right?”
Beau moved his hand to Camille’s forearm, but she didn’t move away. She looked at his large, smooth-skinned fingers and fought the warmth they brought as it radiated through her. With eyes closed, she spun back through time to what his touch did to her. She examined his face as she opened them.
“No, darlin’, I’m afraid he isn’t.”

 * * *

Beau held her in his gaze until, uncomfortable, he moved aside. She’d turned out just fine. Better than he’d expected, a looker, too, but she had always looked good to him. Her long, amber tresses were pulled back into a tousle of clip-captured curls. She dressed as if she’d just stepped from a runway, nails manicured, make-up near flawless, which probably had been before he showed up.
“Cotton…” he began, but she cut him off.
“Please call me Camille. I had my name legally changed years ago. Cotton is dead. She no longer exists.”
Oh but, Cotton did exist right here before him. She’d metamorphosed into a beautiful woman who he had no objection to devour, at least with his eyes, for now. “Okay. You win. I’ll call you Camille if you agree to tell me where you’ve been for the last twenty years.”
She didn’t answer him. “What about my father, and why didn’t some of the others come? Why you?”
“The others?” he said.
“Do I have to run down the list of names? My brothers and sisters? Where are they?”
“They’re doing what people have done in Georgia for years, living off the land, most of them, that is.” Beau hesitated and glanced in her direction. Her porcelain skin blanched even lighter at the mention of her siblings. “Harold has done well for himself. He owns a small store in Sweetwater. All three girls—Elizabeth, Hattie, and Myra—married and live within a stone’s throw of the home place.” Beau stopped, watched her and waited for some reaction. “Joseph did fine in real estate and all. He bought a house right on the river and has two boats and a plane at last count. He’s practicing law right there in Savannah. The other four boys are farmers doing what we grew up knowing.”
Camille looked out of the window. He thought he saw tears glisten in her eyes.
“Joseph hired me to find you. There’d been some talk you’d wound up here in the North but no one knew for sure.”
“Hired you?”
“I’m an attorney. There are some things that need to be settled from your daddy’s estate.”
Camille’s swift spin from the window caused her hand to graze a crystal vase on the corner of her desk. The clear glass shattered when it hit the floor of the silent room. Shards slid across the parquet pattern, caught the sunlight and through the prism, patterned across the walls.
“He’s dead?” echoed from her lips and hung in the air.