She wanted to make love with Alain again—soon. But not in the middle of the showroom. “Come on back. I have some more shuffling to do. The appraiser suggested I send the fainting couch and one or two other pieces to a dealer in New Orleans. She thinks I can double the asking price if I do that and Hugh’s niece agrees.” The woman had also suggested she send the Delacroix fiddle but she’d told her no. Not until she was certain Alain really didn’t want it. She would have told him that, but she didn’t think he’d come to talk about inventory.
She stepped into the auditorium and walked to the foot of the stairway leading to the private box. Once there, she needed something to do with her hands. She picked up one of the funny little overpriced stuffed animals that so intrigued Dana. “I’m afraid I’ve misplaced one of these toys your grandmother’s cousin makes. You know, the one in Canada?”
“I’ve never met any of my Canadian cousins,” he said. “And I don’t know anything about one that makes stuffed animals. But then my mother has over two dozen first cousins alone. I can’t even remember all their names, let alone the seconds and thirds up in Canada.”
“Evidently this cousin makes these stuffed animals, ships them down and Maude sells…sold them for her. I guess she has a following here in Indigo.” Sophie looked at the poor lopsided little frog, wondering, as she always did when she stopped to think about it, who would pay eighty dollars for such a misshapen creature?
“Dana has about a hundred stuffed animals, but Mom and Mamère Yvonne never mentioned anything about some of them being made by relatives in Canada.”
“They’re awfully pricey for children’s toys. There’s a bear in this batch that has a price tag of four hundred and seventy-five dollars.”
“A stuffed bear?” That figure caught his attention. “You’re right. That’s way too pricey. Especially to let Dana play with.” He had moved to stand beside her. She didn’t turn around, but she could feel the heat of his body on her arm and shoulders, and it warmed parts of her that she’d ignored for years.
She steadied herself before she spoke again. “Your mom said it was probably a misprint on the label. She said she’d try and notify the people who ordered them. I’ve decided to put them out on display anyway. There aren’t any names on the tags, no invoice with the shipment, so I have no way of knowing who they were meant to be for. Maybe people will see them in the window and contact me.”
“That sounds reasonable,” he said, then seemed to sense her agitation. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“What? Nothing.” She picked up one or two animals, searching for the bear. “That’s odd,” she said, glad to have found a reason for her distraction that didn’t involve sex. “I can’t seem to find it. The teddy bear. It’s not here.”
He reached out and covered her hand with his. “We’ll look for it later,” he said in that smoky tone of voice that sent her insides quivering with want and need.
She dropped the frog among its companions. “Later,” she agreed. “He probably fell out of the box when we were shifting everything around. He’ll turn up under a seat or something. I’ll give Guy and his buddies a couple of flashlights and send them bear-hunting the next time they show up.”
“Good idea.” He gave her arm a gentle tug, turning her to face him. “Sophie we need to talk about us.”
She wasn’t going to play coy. Him. Them. Us. It was all she thought about—at least in the dark, quiet hours of the night when she should have been asleep. “I don’t know what you want to hear,” she said truthfully.
“Did you mean what you said at the diner? That you’re going back to Houston?”
“I want to see my grandparents. And there’s my job and the expense. Luc’s giving me a great rate at the B&B but I can’t afford to stay there much longer. Especially now that he’s starting to bring in real customers.”
“Don’t go back to Houston,” he urged her, his voice smoky and rough. “Stay here. Give us a chance.”
“A chance for what, Alain?” Her head was spinning and she realized she was holding her breath. She let it out, pulled air back into her lungs.
“This, for one thing.” He bent his head to kiss her as he had in the cupola. But this time it was no gentle exploration. It was a taking, a claiming. He pulled her tight against him and she let herself go willingly. He was strong and hard and fitted her body in all the right places, just as she remembered. He increased the pressure of his mouth against hers, urging her to open to him. She did, welcomed him as their tongues mimicked a more intimate joining.
When the kiss was over she clung to him, too dazed to pull away. This was right. It was good. She had always liked the way he kissed but she had forgotten the full effect he had on her. Her knees were weak; her ears rang. She wanted to hold him so tight she sank into him and they became one. Just as it had always been, she admitted deep in her heart. Just as it would always be.
He stroked her hair with his big hand, held her face against his shirt. He smelled of soap and fabric softener—and Alain. “Don’t go,” he repeated, and she heard his voice shake. “Stay here. With me.”
She wanted to. Oh, how she wanted to. But she was no longer a starry-eyed teenager, or a bereft young woman betrayed by the man she had unwisely chosen to take his place in her heart. She was an adult, with obligations and commitments. “It’s not that easy, Alain. Not anymore.”
“Sophie, I—”
A shaft of panic arrowed through her. She lifted her head, put her fingers to his lips. “Don’t go too fast for me, Alain, please.”
He brushed his fingers across her cheek, searched her face with his deep-blue eyes. He sighed. “Promise me you’ll come back. Soon. So we can talk. Work out a plan.”
“What kind of plan?”
“For our happily ever after.”
“Oh, Alain.” Her thoughts were an equal mix of pleasure and pain. She had wanted him, at some level, for so long but was it too late now? Were their lives on divergent paths, impossible to bring together?
“I know I shouldn’t say this here and now, but I’m going to before I lose my nerve. We’ve sidestepped what’s between us for too long. Sophie, I—” Somewhere in the back of her mind she heard the front door open and close, voices echo through the showroom. One a child’s, Dana, laughing and excited. The other, hauntingly familiar, was a voice Sophie had hoped never to hear again.
Alain heard them, too. He stopped in midsentence, his eyes going bleak, his face hardening. Sophie’s heart was still beating fast, but no longer from passion and anticipation, but with dread.
A figure appeared in the doorway and a mocking voice drawled, “I think I walked in on this scene once before.”
Sophie took an instinctive step backward, hating herself for the spurt of guilt that rushed through her veins and sent color rising in her cheeks. How could the same embarrassing scene play itself out twice in her life? She felt as if she were one of those poor creatures who were struck by lightning a second time, even though the odds were millions to one against that happening. Alain held on to her hand, but when she tugged to be free he let her go, his mouth thinning to a straight line.
“Casey Jo, what are you doing here?”
“I was looking for our son. Your mother thought Guy might be here, but I can see she was mistaken about which one of you I’d find.” Casey Jo’s dark-rimmed, long-lashed eyes, as cold as green glass, flicked from Alain’s stony face to Sophie’s flushed one. “Ain’t this just déjà vu all over again?”
She was still as pretty as Sophie remembered, but there was a hardness to her beauty now. Her hair was streaked with blond, but dark roots showed here and there. Her cheeks were surgically sculpted; her breasts enhanced and prominently displayed beneath a clinging black sweater and skin-tight capris. She was wearing strappy black, high-heeled sandals and long, swingy silver ear hoops, and she looked as out of place in Past Perfect as she could possibly be.
“Guy is at his driver’s ed class. What are you doing here in Indigo?”
Her head came up. “You know perfectly well why I’m here. I came to take my babies to Disney World like I promised.”
“We’re going to leave first thing in the morning.” Dana was almost dancing with excitement. “I wanted to pack my suitcase right away but Grandma said no. We had to come and talk to you first.”
“Your mother wasn’t going to let me take Dana out of the house. Did you put her up to that, Alain?”
“No, Casey Jo,” he said, and his voice sounded weary, as though they had gone over this same ground countless times before.
“Well, you’d better not. I’ve never fought you for custody, but that doesn’t mean I might not change my mind if you push me too far.” Once more she let her gem-hard eyes flicker toward Sophie.
Dana was hanging on her mother’s hand, looking up into her face. She switched her gaze to Alain, her eyes, so like Casey Jo’s, pleading. “I want to go to Disney World, Daddy. I haven’t got to see Momma for so long. We’re going to have so much fun. She promised. Please.”
“I don’t know, baby,” Alain said.
Dana didn’t hear him; she had switched her attention to Sophie. “We’re going to have breakfast with the princesses in the castle and everything—Momma promised.” She repeated the words like a talisman, a magic spell that would make her dearest wish come true.
Sophie forced a smile. “That’s nice, Dana.” Her heart went out to the little girl, caught between a father she adored and relied on, and a mother who came and went in her life, but whom she also obviously loved and wanted to be with.
“I thought we’d settled this, Casey Jo,” Alain said.
“I don’t remember any such a thing,” his ex-wife retorted with a toss of her dangling earrings. “Dana wants to go and I don’t see why I shouldn’t take her. If we start this afternoon we’ll have two whole days at the park.”
“It’s a seven-hundred-mile drive.” Sophie could see Alain was trying hard to hang on to his patience for Dana’s sake. She was looking from one parent to another, the excitement in her green eyes fading into anxiety with each clipped exchange of words.
“So what? My car’s in good shape.”
The radio on Alain’s belt crackled into life. “Chief Boudreaux, come in please.”
“I’m here, Billy Paul.”
“Frank Gillette says there’s a gator come up in his yard and it’s a big one. He called the sheriff’s department, but they said they can’t get anyone out there for another hour or two. He’s afraid it might go after his dogs.”
Alain pulled the radio off his belt clip and toggled the receiver. “I’ll head out that way, but I doubt the gator’s going to go after Frank’s dogs. It’s too cold. He’s probably just sunning himself and he’ll crawl back into the swamp in another hour or two.”
“I tried telling Frank that,” came the reply. “But he’s worried about his darned old coon dogs. You know he thinks the world of those Catahoulas of his.”
“I’ll head on out that way, Frank. Call the sheriff and see if you can’t hurry his guys up a little. Boudreaux out.”
“An alligator! Daddy, can I ride with you and see it?” Dana was momentarily diverted from the subject of the disputed trip to Disney World.
“No, honey. I’m on duty. I can’t take you with me.” Dana’s lower lip jutted out. Disappointment was written all over her elfin face. “Take her home, Casey Jo. We’ll discuss the trip when I get there.”
For a moment Sophie thought Alain’s ex-wife was going to continue the argument, but she didn’t. She smiled, a cat-in-the-cream kind of smile. “Come on, Dana, honey. Let’s go pick up Grandma Marie and we’ll all go get some ice cream. How does that sound?”
Dana began to jump up and down. “I love ice cream. I want chocolate chip with whipped cream and sprinkles on top.”
“Casey Jo.” There was nothing but steel in Alain’s voice. “Take Dana straight back to my mother’s when you’re finished having ice cream.”
“I’ll take her back when we’re finished visitin’ with my mother,” she shot back.
“Don’t do anything foolish, Casey Jo,” he warned.
She batted her improbably long lashes and gave him another smile, this one full of acid and animosity. “I wouldn’t think of it, Alain.”
They watched Casey Jo and Dana depart in silence.
“Damn. I’d hoped she’d decided not to push this Florida trip. But that’s Casey Jo for you, always showing up to make life more complicated. I should have known better.” He turned to face her. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I don’t know what else to say about the way Casey Jo behaves.”
“It’s not your responsibility how she behaves. But maybe it was a good thing it happened. We were going a little too fast back down a path that landed us against a brick wall a couple of other times.”
“Sophie.” Again the radio on his belt crackled. Alain muttered a curse.
“Chief, you on your way out to Frank’s place yet?” Billy Paul asked without preamble.
“I’m leaving right now.”
“Well good. He just called back and says the gator made a charge at his dogs. I told him to shut them up in his barn but he says he don’t want the darned thing coming after him, too.”
“Unlock the weapons case. Break out a shotgun. I’ll swing by and pick it up on my way out of town. Boudreaux out.”
“I have to go, Sophie.” He lifted his hand but she took a step back before he could take her in his arms. She wasn’t ready for another mind-shattering kiss. She had too much to think about to have her thoughts clouded even more by passion and need. Alain’s life was a complicated one. Was she ready to take on the responsibilities of being stepmother to his children if she uprooted herself and relocated to Indigo? Was she ready to have Casey Jo popping up whenever she felt like it to disrupt all their lives? “Go. Chase off the gator, then see to Dana and Guy.”
“I’ll be back,” he promised. He didn’t touch her, but she could feel the brush of his fingers across her cheek as surely as if he had.
He would be back, she didn’t doubt his word.
But would she be waiting for him?
CHAPTER TWELVE
SOPHIE SPENT a restless night in her cozy suite tucked under the eaves. She was up early, foregoing the enticing smells of breakfast coming from the kitchen of La Petite Maison—except for a cup of Luc’s excellent French-pressed coffee. Instead she headed into Indigo even before the sun had burned away the mist clinging to the surface of the bayou.
She didn’t know why she was in such a hurry to return to Past Perfect. She would be better off spending the day in her comfortable, quiet room, perhaps sitting out on her little balcony, contemplating what she should do next.
Pack her bags and leave would be the most expedient choice.
But she’d done that twice before when Alain Boudreaux was concerned, and it wasn’t an option this time. She was tired of trailing loose ends through her life.
But instead of driving to the store, she found herself pulling up in front of Maude’s little house. The narrow, tree-lined street was quiet. Most of Maude’s former neighbors were older couples, empty-nesters and retirees, although there were one or two young families fixing up larger houses down the street, Sophie had noticed. Indigo might be a very small town, but it was in no sense fading away. The population was stable and even growing, if slowly. She got out and walked up to the front porch, key in hand. She no longer felt overwhelmed by grief for her godmother when she opened the door. Instead she felt a sense of peace, that tantalizing, elusive sense of belonging that was so absent from her life in Houston. Maybe that was why she had come here today, to soak in that feeling, to let it seep into her pores and her mind and help guide her thoughts to a decision about her future and Alain.
It was a nice house; she’d always thought so. She’d like to keep it, but it wasn’t big enough for a family. Alain was a package deal. He came with Dana and Guy in tow. That’s what she would inherit if she let herself fall the res
t of the way in love with him. A ready-made family. And an interfering ex-wife. Was she ready to accept that responsibility, too? Her head swam with all the decisions that faced her. Career. Marriage. Family.
She shook her head to clear the confusion as she unlocked the door. All this internal upheaval after only a couple of kisses. Would she have any mental faculties left after they made love? She doubted it. Was that why she’d chosen to stay at the B&B, despite the expense, instead of moving in here? Because she didn’t trust herself alone with Alain with not one but two empty bedrooms only steps away? What would it be like to make love with him after so many years? She’d already asked herself that question, and answered it. She smiled; she couldn’t help herself. It would be wonderful. No doubt about that.
So mind-bogglingly wonderful she probably wouldn’t be able to make rational judgments afterward. So she needed to consider her options now.
“Hi, Sophie.” She turned her head to see Dana standing out on the sidewalk. She was dressed in jeans and running shoes and a long-sleeved green sweater made from some sparkly material that matched her eyes. Over that she wore her red Winnie the Pooh raincoat with a matching hat, even though the sun was shining. She was dragging a wheeled suitcase along behind her. It was pink, with a trio of Disney princesses printed on the front. The child was a walking rainbow, and to Sophie, at least, she looked adorable.
“Hi, Dana, what are you doing out and about so early this morning?” Indigo wasn’t Houston but it seemed very early for a seven-year-old to be out on her own, even here.
“I’m going to my grandma Marie’s. My mommy is staying there. She and my daddy don’t live together anymore, you know.”
“I know.” Sophie turned away from the door. She sat down on the top porch step and patted the seat beside her. It didn’t take an expert on child behavior to figure out why Dana was dressed for a change in the weather and towing her suitcase. She was running away from Alain to be with her mother. “Come join me.”
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