No Limits

by Alison Kent

  By all rights, King and Simon should have owned the property jointly, the way their mothers as sisters had. But King’s parents died without having changed their will to provide for his future. His aunt, Simon’s mother, had petitioned the court for custody and won, walking away with not only her sister’s kid but his share of the four thousand acres that had been in their family since the Civil War.

  The oil had been discovered before Simon and King were born. The production hadn’t been astronomical, the barrels enough to provide for the Trahan and Baptiste families. Then came the accident that had taken King’s parents and the tragedies that had followed to take Simon’s away as well.

  The cousins had stuck together through all of it, running the place on a smaller scale after Simon’s father took off after their graduation. Or they had until Simon had managed to burn down King’s house and they’d both been sentenced to serve time.

  When King had come home, he’d wanted to pick up the drilling where they’d left off. Things hadn’t worked out the way he’d expected, and somewhere along the way he’d stopped caring. Why should he be the one doing so when the place wasn’t even his? When he’d heard Simon was coming to check out the property, he hadn’t been surprised. No reason for his cousin to hang on to a losing proposition that hadn’t interested him since his discharge.

  But what was Simon doing with Michelina Ferrer?

  The night in Red’s when King had met her, she hadn’t said a word about knowing Simon, or traveling with him to Bayou Allain. But then they hadn’t done a lot of talking. She’d come there to find someone who could tell her where to find Lisa.

  The way she’d stormed out of the bar, she obviously hadn’t been happy with what she’d found out, or the way the information had been deep-fried and served up with a side of Bear Landry’s bullshit. She’d flown out of the place as riled up as Terrill had only minutes before.

  King had pressed Chelle for answers. She hadn’t been too thrilled when he hadn’t wanted to talk about anything besides what had gone down between his cousin and the judge.

  If the woman didn’t understand his fixation, that was her problem, not his. Sex wasn’t worth the hassle of having her get up in his face over something she didn’t understand—though he wasn’t much for understanding things himself, it seemed.

  If he was, he’d have an answer to why he was still sitting here wasting time and wasting gas instead of shifting into drive and getting the answers he’d come here to get—even if doing so meant facing the man who had ruined his life.

  Twenty-three

  S imon needed a bigger truck. That’s all there was to it. He used this one in the field, kept it garaged when he was working at SG-5’s Manhattan ops center. Cabs, the subway, his feet—they all made a lot more sense than trying to maneuver this beast through the city.

  But driving back to his place from town, his second row of seats filled with Micky’s purchases and Micky taking up the passenger side of the front, well, he needed more room. He was surrounded by her, and it was making him crazy…the way she smelled so rich, her attitude that was so full of bite, her fingers right now clenched tightly in her lap.

  All the time that he’d talked to her billboard, he’d thought about her hands. They weren’t visible in the picture, hidden beneath her hair as she lifted it, the mane just ready to fall in thick glossy waves. He’d thought about her hands because he’d thought about touching her, about her touching him, and they hadn’t been nice thoughts at all.

  The drive back to his place took thirty minutes. They were only halfway through and all he’d thought about since the diner was not having to keep his hands to himself unless that’s what he wanted to do. Right now he had to keep them on the wheel, but once they were back at the house—

  “Do you think Judge Landry is capable of harming Lisa?” Micky interrupted his musings to ask. “Do you know him well enough to say?”

  Shoptalk. That he could deal with. Question was, could she deal with the truth? “Bear Landry is a lot of things, and none of them particularly nice. Whether or not he’d hurt Lisa? I don’t want to think he has that in him, but I’d be lying through my teeth if I told you I didn’t think the man’s involved somehow with her disappearance.”

  “She was just mad about Terrill. The kind of mad that’s intoxicating. I’ve never seen anyone else that much in love.” She grew silent, sighed deeply, then, “I can’t stand to think her father-in-law might be the reason she’s gone.”

  And Bear was most likely the reason Micky had almost been gone.…“You’ve never been that much in love?”

  Well, hell. That wasn’t what he’d meant to ask.

  “If I had a relationship like that, do you think I’d have run away from home to commiserate with a girlfriend?”

  Relationships didn’t always last, no matter how perfect they seemed at the start. Surely she knew that. She couldn’t be that naïve, not with the life she’d led, the things she’d seen. But since he wasn’t much of a relationship guy, not wanting to deal with exactly what Eli McKenzie was suffering now with Stella, all Simon said was, “It’ll happen. When it’s time.”

  She snorted. “You’re kidding, right? Do you know the baggage I come with? The things anyone who wants to be with me has to deal with? That’s assuming a man might want to be with me and not just my name. Trust me. Half the time even I don’t know if it’s worth it. And now with this latest…”

  He waited for her to go on, but she didn’t say a thing. She sat with her elbow braced on the door, her chin in her palm as she stared out the window. The bridge was coming up. She hadn’t breathed a word when they’d crossed it on their way into town, but they’d been going the opposite direction.

  Heading toward the bridge now, he didn’t see how she could help noticing the spot where she’d been rammed from behind and sent flying. He picked up the conversation where she’d dropped it, hoping to distract her for the rest of the drive.

  “What latest? The case of the missing underpants?”

  She shrugged as if the incident that had brought her here had lost its stranglehold in light of what she’d been through since. “The case of the missing underpants was a smaller manifestation of a much bigger problem.”

  Yeah. He’d say she was distracted. “Your girl-gone-wild tendencies getting out of control? They probably make a pill for that.”

  “What’s getting out of control is my father’s insistence on running my life his way. I get it when it comes to my position with Ferrer and his wanting final say on everything to do with the company image. But now he’s messing in my personal life, and that’s just not going to work.”

  “Messing how?”

  Micky buried her face in both hands. “God, it’s so archaic. He brought me a man from the Old Country to marry.”

  Simon found himself grinding his jaw. “Old Country?”

  “To him it’s the Old Country. Where he was born and raised. Where he met my mother. Where Ferrer Fragrances was established by my great-grandfather. To me it’s just Italy.”

  Now he wanted to laugh. She made him want to laugh. Her sarcasm. Her self-deprecating nature. The way that he had yet to see her put on anything resembling airs.

  But he couldn’t laugh because there was some guy out there expecting to marry her when she’d belonged to Simon since the morning he’d first looked up from his patio and seen the billboard with her face.

  “Who is this guy? This future husband of yours?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t met him. And, no, I don’t plan to. The arranged-marriage thing is not going to happen. My father says I have no choice. I have a duty to the family and the Ferrer name.”

  “And you thought losing your underpants in public would get him to change his mind.”

  “Or at least disinherit and fire me.”

  “But he didn’t.”

  “Actually, I haven’t talked to him to find out. I’ve had too many other things going on.”

  That was some kind of understa
tement. “If you wanted him to fire you, why did you run? Or were you trying to give him more ammunition?”

  “Mostly I just didn’t want to face him,” she said softly. “I’m thirty years old and I still fear my father’s wrath.”

  More like she feared disappointing him, and the panty stunt was an easier pill to swallow than refusing the man he wanted her to marry and her father by extension. This way the man could refuse her, and if her father was smart, he’d see that’s what she was doing.

  “Of course, the fact that I still live in his house doesn’t help matters any.”

  Wait a minute. “Wait a minute. You still live with your father?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “One that’s got to be a big wet rag for your dates.” Was she really surprised that she’d never had a serious relationship?

  “It’s not something I tell them.”

  “What do you tell them?”

  “That I have a policy about taking men home—I don’t.”

  “You go home with them instead?”

  “I’ll rent a hotel suite if things go that far.”

  “If you decide to sleep with them, you mean.”

  “No. What I mean is that if a relationship progresses to the point of needing quality time, then the suite is the next step. I don’t need it to have sex.”

  “And if they pass that test? You move on to telling them about living with daddy?” No wonder she’d never experienced intoxicating, living in this bizarre reality that was as bad as his obsession with a billboard.

  “I don’t know,” she said, reminding him that he’d asked her a question. “None of them have ever gone that far.”

  He started to press, curious, wondering, until he realized they were heading for twitch territory. Her living situation seemed a safer conversational choice, and yeah, he was doing exactly what she’d accused him of. “So what’s the long story? About you living with your father?”

  “We don’t have time. Your driveway is right up ahead.”

  She hadn’t said a word about the accident when they’d crossed the bridge. He didn’t know if she’d been lost in thought and hadn’t noticed, or if she had noticed and decided mentioning it would only open the wounds that had started to heal.

  “You’ve got time for the short version.”

  “Not everything lends itself to being condensed.”

  “Try,” he said, coaxing, not wanting to examine too closely the why of his insistence.

  “I don’t like thinking about my father living alone. He’s perfectly capable, in excellent health, has all his faculties and wits. My rational side knows he’d be fine. He’s told me repeatedly that he’d be fine.

  “But then I start thinking about him being there by himself and I imagine all sorts of ridiculous scenarios, like he’s fallen in the tub, or impaled his heel on a golf tee, and I go nuts. Besides, he has plenty of room. We rarely even see each other. But I know I’m close, and it makes me feel better.”

  Simon started to point out the contradiction she was living, but Micky was a smart cookie and had no doubt figured that out for herself already. He decided not to say anything, just to let her stew.

  And then anything he might have said was lost as his house came into view, and along with it his cousin’s truck—and King himself cocked back on the porch steps as if he alone owned every one of Le Hasard’s four thousand acres.

  Twenty-four

  T errill knew he was spending too much clock time working Lisa’s case, but he would turn in his resignation without notice if anyone gave him grief and never miss his position. His father would undoubtedly miss having the personal connection to law enforcement, his own inside man.

  Lately Terrill didn’t much care what his father thought, or wanted, or expected of him. Anytime Bear called or came by, he made mention of Lisa only after he’d taken care of business. Because it was always business. Every single time.

  Terrill couldn’t get over the change in his father’s behavior. Maybe it was just Bear’s way of dealing, but it seemed an awfully strange way to deal.

  Up until Lisa’s disappearance, his father had been nothing but devoted to his only daughter-in-law, warm even, often-times joking with her or taking her into his confidence in ways that left Terrill feeling like a third wheel.

  And at Christmas or on her birthdays? Bear spoiled her worse than he could possibly have spoiled a grandchild. Lisa had taken it in stride, never letting it go to her head, but his fondness for her had played another part in her tackling the family genealogy.

  She’d wanted to know more about where he’d come from, to share with him anything of interest she’d found. She’d also decided the photo album would be the perfect way to show her appreciation for his unconditional acceptance of her as a Landry.

  And now this.

  Terrill pulled into his own driveway, sat in his cruiser just long enough for the curtains on the Picards’ windows to flutter back into place before climbing from the car and jogging across the street to Paschelle’s garage. He’d slipped the key on his ring last night and had come back late, staying only thirty minutes or so for fear that he’d disturb Paschelle.

  The boxes were labeled by dates, so he’d arranged them chronologically, figuring starting at the beginning was always a good move. He knew that’s what Lisa had done, working her way forward and sorting through memorabilia dating back before Bear’s parents were born. Her notes told him that she’d made it to nineteen eighty-eight before she’d vanished, and Terrill had been thinking about the last twenty years off and on all day.

  Which was why he’d changed his plans. Instead of starting at the beginning, he would start where Lisa had stopped. If her disappearance was the result of what she’d discovered, the timing could be the clue. Not only the timing of the two events coinciding, but the timing of the Landry history she’d been digging into.

  He laughed to himself, a weak cackle that was more of a cry than anything else. How sad was it that his wife had learned more of his family’s secrets than he’d ever known. And that if he’d paid more attention to Bear’s nefarious dealings, rather than turning the expected blind eye, he might have done a better job of keeping his wife safe by holding his father to the letter of the law.

  Yeah, he knew that blaming himself for something without even having all of the facts wasn’t particularly smart, but he couldn’t help thinking about all the things he could have done differently, or better, how he could have been a better husband, protecting the precious life that had been given to him like a gift to share.

  “Need any help?

  He glanced over his shoulder at the sound of Paschelle’s voice. She stood in the doorway, her arms crossed, one shoulder braced on the jamb, wearing flip-flops beneath a long skirt that barely showed her ankles. She looked like a girl, not a woman of twenty-eight, and he thought again about Lisa worrying that she was too young and soft and inexperienced for King. Terrill had to say he was glad the other man might not be coming around anymore. King wasn’t a bad guy, just…rough, and who he was.

  “The company would be nice, but I figure I’d better do all the digging myself since I’m not even sure what I’m looking for.”

  “Company I can provide,” she said, then walked inside, boosted up to sit on a two-drawer file cabinet.

  “What are you doing here this time of day?” he asked. “You home sick?”

  She shook her head. “Lorna closed the office for the afternoon.”

  “Made the day’s million before one o’clock, eh?” He didn’t bother to hide his sarcasm. He knew Lorna was only Paschelle’s boss. There was no love lost between them as friends. “Must be nice.”

  Paschelle snickered like a kid with a secret. “You haven’t heard, then. I figured the news would be all over town by now.”

  He closed up the folder of papers he’d just thumbed through, slid it back into place in the box, and gave her his full attention. “What news?”

  “Simon Baptiste came to t
he office. He was supposed to sit down with Lorna and go over things about the maintenance on his place.”

  “You mean how it’s not being done?”

  “Exactly. Lorna and your father gave him some B.S. about no one wanting to live near a convicted felon in a house where a woman committed suicide, though he only implied the suicide part.”

  That sounded like the sort of crap Bear would pull. “What did Simon say?”

  “Not much. He told Lorna to get his refund check ready and to consider their contract canceled. He’d be handling the property himself from now on.”

  Finally protecting his own interests. Seemed like more than a few of them dealing with Bear were finally wising up. “Baptiste has always been a straight-up guy, from what I hear.”

  “You didn’t know him?”

  “I knew of him. I was in junior high when he and King played high school football. One a receiver, one a back. Everyone in the district knew Simon and King.”

  “What went wrong between them?”

  “You mean the fire?”

  “Was that it? I’ve read the stories in newspaper archives, but I didn’t see anything other than the facts. And they don’t seem enough for this feud.”

  “What has King said about it?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing. We don’t talk much.”

  Terrill felt his ears begin to burn. If they weren’t talking, well, he didn’t want to know. “I don’t know anything for certain, but I hear tell it had to do with the blame, neither of them admitting to lighting the match, though the fire was a clear case of arson.”

  “So they both had to pay.”

  “In any other parish, I doubt it would have happened, but Bear ran his courtroom his way back then. Neither one confessed, both were there, drunk on their butts.”