Marisa Carroll - Hotel Marchand 09

by Her Summer Lover

  “Not today.” Guy’s dark, angled brows pulled together in a frown just as Alain’s did when he was worried. She wanted a son with those same dark brows and strong nose. Thoughts like that made her anxious to return to Houston. She needed to step back and take stock of her life before she did something she might regret for the rest of her days.

  “She’s probably having too much fun,” Sophie said, knowing how lame the platitude sounded. She hoped she was right, though. Hoped that Dana was, this very moment, whirling around in a giant teacup, squealing with delight.

  “She was still supposed to call me. I gave her my old phone so she’d have one of her own.”

  “Maybe she lost it. Or forgot to charge the battery. She’s only seven,” Sophie reminded him gently.

  “Yeah, maybe. Or maybe something’s wrong.” He set his jaw and jammed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “My dad thinks Dana will be okay with her but I’m not so sure.” The deliberate omission of his mother’s name wasn’t lost on Sophie.

  She hesitated before asking any more questions. She wasn’t certain how far into his confidence Guy would take her. Or how far she should try to probe. Did her renewed love for Alain entitle her to counsel his son? She decided to take it one question at a time, relying on her own good judgment to warn her when to back off. “Did anything like that ever happen when you were with your mother?”

  He gave her a long, considering look, then nodded. “She took me to the mall one day when I was little. And when I got tired she set me down on a bench and left me there. For hours it seemed, while she went off looking for new shoes. I had to go to the bathroom really bad and I started to cry. Finally a security guy came over and asked me what was wrong. I was afraid to tell him. I was so dumb I thought I would get in trouble, not her. He was going to take me to the mall office and page her, except I thought it must be a jail. I really started to wail. You could hear me all over the mall. Just then, she came back.”

  “Did you tell your father about it?”

  “No. She cried and cried and said she was sorry and that it would make Dad mad at both of us if I told him about it. For a long time I thought the whole thing was my fault. I don’t want my sister feeling like that.”

  “I can understand why you wouldn’t. I wish you’d tell your father what happened. It would make it easier for him to understand where you’re coming from.”

  “I suppose,” he admitted grudgingly.

  “He might have changed his mind if he’d known she left you alone like that,” she added gently. So far, so good, she thought. She hadn’t said anything yet to send him stomping off into the rain.

  “Yeah, I thought of that, too.” He yanked up the zipper of his windbreaker. “But it’s too late now. Look. I gotta go. I’ll be back in the morning with Antoine to hang the reopening banner.” Amelia Prejean had agreed to start work on Monday. Sophie would plan some sort of back-in-business celebration for later, when the weather was better, but for now she just wanted to get the cash flow moving again. There were bills to be paid.

  Guy pulled open the door of the opera house and the smell of rain swirled in on the wet air. Sophie had told herself she was only a sounding board for him, not a mentor, not a parent. But she couldn’t stop herself from offering her opinion. “Guy,” she called as he stepped outside. He looked back at her, pulling up the hood of his windbreaker. “Try not to worry too much about Dana. Remember, your dad has good instincts. He wouldn’t have let her go with your mother otherwise.”

  He gave a curt nod, acknowledging her words, and loped off into the rain.

  FOR A FEW DAYS it had seemed as if spring wasn’t too far away. But it had been an illusion. The wind was cold and wet as Alain got out of the Explorer and mounted the porch of Maude’s little house. Lights were burning in the living-room window and in the kitchen.

  He rang the bell, watching as Sophie’s willowy figure came toward him, hips swaying gently, her silhouette frosted by the etched-glass door, just as his breath was frosted by the cold.

  “Alain,” she said, her smile warming him from the inside out. “Come in out of the rain.”

  “Thanks.” He stepped directly into the fussy, crowded living room. He lifted his head, sniffed appreciatively. The slightly musty, unlived-in smell was gone, replaced by…chocolate chip cookies.

  Sophie’s smile turned into a grin. “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not cookies. It’s a candle. I brought it over from the shop.”

  “Too bad. I could use a couple of warm chocolate chip cookies.”

  “That hard a day?” she asked, concern darkening her eyes. Was he just imagining it or was she holding herself aloof from him, withdrawing slightly? He couldn’t blame her if she started having second thoughts about getting involved again, especially after Casey Jo had barged back into their lives.

  “I’ve had better. Three fender benders and two vandalism complaints out on the River Road. Probably the same kids spray-painting gang signs on outbuildings.”

  “Gang signs?” She looked incredulous. “Gangs in Indigo?”

  “The kids pick up on the signs and the colors, stuff like that, but they don’t have one damn inkling of what it truly signifies. I’ve got a good idea who it is. I’ll talk to their parents tomorrow, see if we can work some kind of deal with the barn owners and keep them out of court.” They weren’t bad kids and there was no reason in his mind to hang a juvenile rap around their necks.

  “In other words you’ve been out in the rain all day.”

  “Most of it,” he agreed.

  “I don’t have any chocolate chip cookies but I do have oyster stew from the Blue Moon and a loaf of Loretta’s fruit-and-spice bread that’s a meal in itself. There’s plenty. We can share.”

  “Thanks, I’d like that.” More than like, he thought to himself. It was his idea of heaven. Sophie bustling about in the kitchen, handing him bowls and plates from the cupboard to set the table; the smell of coffee brewing as the rainy darkness pressing against the windows was kept at bay by the warmth of her voice and the brightness of her smile. “You’ve been spending a lot of time here the last couple of days.”

  She looked around the kitchen at the country blue-and-rose wallpaper and the brick-patterned linoleum that was at least twenty years out of date, the appliances that were a decade older than that, the shelves of knickknacks and salt-and-pepper shakers, and nodded. “I know I have. It’s time for me to start going through Maude’s things here. At first it made me too sad to think of, so I stayed away. Lately, though…” She shrugged and looked down at her plate, not meeting his eyes. “It’s beginning to feel like home—” She broke off and then corrected herself. “I mean, it feels like Maude’s home again, not just an empty house.”

  “I noticed that, too, when I came in. Maybe it was the candle.”

  She looked up and smiled. “And the soup. Sit down. Eat while it’s hot.” She was quiet a moment as he took off his jacket and laid it over the back of a chair.

  “Look at you,” she said, laughing. “You’re out of uniform.”

  He glanced down at his jeans and dark-gray chamois shirt. “I do occasionally wear civvies.”

  “I was beginning to wonder,” she said, still smiling. She motioned to a chair. “Sit.” When he was seated she asked, “Have you heard from Dana today? I asked Guy earlier but he said no.”

  “Nothing,” he said curtly.

  “They’re probably having too much fun to stop and phone home.” Her smile remained in place but she couldn’t mask the concern in her voice.

  “It’s raining there, too.”

  “I know.”

  “Guy’s worried about Dana,” she said, setting a bowl of steaming soup in front of him.

  “I spoke to him a little while ago.” Alain picked up his spoon. It was old-fashioned silver, heavy and ornate, made to fit a man’s hand. “I know he has a lot of issues with his mother, but he’s really got himself tied into a knot over this Disney trip.” He looked across the table at So
phie as she sat down with her own bowl of soup. “It’s not the first time I’ve allowed Casey Jo to have custody of Dana for a day or two. But it is the farthest away she’s ever taken her. God help me, I hope I didn’t make a mistake.”

  “So does Guy,” Sophie said, buttering a slice of the fragrant spice bread before handing it to him. “Did he tell you why he’s so worried about Casey Jo taking Dana this time?”

  “Not really,” Alain confessed. “I’ve got the feeling there’s more to it than he’s telling me, but he won’t give me any details.” She was looking down at her soup, spoon poised. “Sophie, did he tell you why he’s so angry?”

  She didn’t answer him, or look up from her plate for a long moment. “Yes,” she said, finally meeting his eyes, her blue-gray gaze troubled. “But I don’t know if I should pass on what he said.”

  “You have to tell me, Sophie. What happened? Did Casey Jo hurt him?” She had never been abusive to the kid. Thoughtless and careless, yes. But she had never hurt them. Or had she? Alain’s blood ran cold in his veins. “Did she hurt him, Sophie? I have to know.”

  “Not physically,” Sophie said quickly, holding up her hand as though cautioning him to rein in his stampeding thoughts. “But she left him alone in a mall when he was very small. Long enough, evidently, to frighten him so badly he’s never forgotten it. He’s afraid something like that will happen to Dana, too.”

  Alain wanted to slam the spoon down on the table, or throw the soup across the room, anything to relieve the surge of anger and guilt that shot into his veins. “I never knew. He never told me.” His mind raced back to the years he and Casey Jo had been together in New Orleans when Guy was very small. “I was working double shifts on the New Orleans PD then. I was gone a lot. If he remembers that one incident, there were probably others. How the hell could I have been so blind?”

  “You weren’t blind,” Sophie said, reaching out to cover the fist he’d made around his spoon with her warm, comforting fingers. “You just said you were working double shifts. You were gone most of the time, trying to make a better life for your wife and child. You couldn’t have known what she was doing with Guy every hour of the day.”

  “She was neglecting him even then and I should have recognized it. Damn. That makes me as bad a parent as she is.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said sharply. She withdrew her hand. “All right. Maybe you should have recognized the signs with Guy, and maybe not. Maybe it did only happen once. You need to ask him.”

  “That’s not going to do me any good tonight.”

  “No, but it will in the future. Did you have any suspicion she was neglecting Dana?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “She didn’t stick around long enough after Dana was born to neglect her. She was an accident, my sweet baby. Our final attempt at a reconciliation. It didn’t last long enough for me even to suspect Casey Jo was pregnant. We never shared a bed again, even though it was another two years before she took off for good.”

  He rested his elbows on the table and covered his left fist with his right hand. He felt the chill as the warmth of her fingers faded from his skin. He looked at her, expecting to see the same loathing in her expression he was feeling for himself at the moment. Instead he saw compassion and something more underlying the blue of her eyes, like smoke swirling in the twilight sky. Something deeper, richer than empathy for his pain. Was it love, or only a reflection of what he felt for her?

  “You haven’t made any worse mistakes than a lot of other parents.”

  “I should have sat Guy down and made him tell me why he was so angry with Casey Jo a long time ago.”

  She leaned slightly forward, her hands flat on the table top. “Granted, you should have talked to Guy, but that’s no guarantee he would have told you what he told me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s fifteen and you’re his father. He doesn’t need any other reason than that. And you’re both stubborn Boudreaux men.” She smiled. “He’s begun to realize he was wrong not to tell you about what happened. He’s a smart kid. He understands now that his silence helped put his sister in the kind of situation he endured when he was small. He’s as angry with himself as he is with you for allowing the visit in the first place.”

  Alain finished his soup in silence. What she said made a lot of sense. Guy was a proud kid. He took his role as Dana’s big brother and protector seriously. He would be as mad at himself as he was with Alain. “I should be getting home,” he said, getting up from the table. “Casey Jo might have called her mother, or mine. And I have to talk to Guy, work this out.”

  Sophie came around the table to him. “You’ll let me know when you hear from Dana and Casey Jo?”

  “Of course.” He didn’t like the faint hint of distance he heard in her voice, the feeling that she was pulling back from him. He wasn’t going to wait any longer to tell her what was on his mind. He’d waited too long already. There was never going to be a perfect moment. He reached for her instead of his coat. For a moment he thought she would step away, but slowly her muscles relaxed and she slipped her arms around his waist, laid her head against his chest. “Sophie, there’s something I have to tell you, to ask you.” His heart began to thud against his ribs. He supposed she could hear it.

  She lifted her head to stare up at him. “Alain, I wish you wouldn’t,” she whispered. Sadness darkened her eyes to a foggy gray. “Not yet.”

  “You know what I’m going to say,” he said, framing her face with his hands. “I love you, Sophie. Part of me has always loved you, even during all those years when I tried as hard as I could to put you completely out of my mind.” Like the last red-gold ember of a dying fire buried in ash, the love he had felt for her for more than a dozen years had needed only a breath of air to stir it to life.

  “I know,” she said, tears shimmering on her lashes. “I’ve always felt that way about you, too. But that doesn’t mean it will work between us now any better than it would when we were teenagers.”

  “Can’t you give us a chance?” He laid his forehead against hers. “Sophie, will you—”

  “No.” She pressed her fingertips to his lips. “Don’t say any more.”

  The words cut into his heart. “Sophie, I know I’ve got a lot of complications in my life right now. The kids—”

  “The kids aren’t the problem. They’re wonderful kids. I’d be the happiest woman on earth if they were mine. And it’s not Casey Jo that’s the problem. At least, not all of it. It’s me, Alain. You’re a man who will need an extraordinary woman to handle all the complications in your life. I’m not sure I’ve got what it takes.”

  “You just admitted you could love me again.”

  “Sometimes that’s not enough.” She placed her hands on his chest, holding herself away from him. “My track record in marriage isn’t any better than yours. I got burned badly. It almost destroyed me. I don’t know if I want to make that kind of commitment again.” She brushed her tears aside with the back of her hand. “I’m not going to cry,” she said fiercely. “I’m trying to tell you what’s in my heart. I’m not going to mess it up with tears. I’ve got a life and a career in Houston, Alain. I’m not sure I’m ready to give that up. And that’s what promising myself to you would mean. Indigo’s where you belong. Once upon a time I thought I could belong here, too. But that was a long time ago. Now I’m not so naive or so brave to think that love is all it takes.”

  “Don’t you believe in second chances?” he asked, using all his willpower not to pull her back into his arms and never let her go.

  She laid her fingers against his cheek. “I think that week seven years ago was our second chance.” The sadness in her voice chilled him to the marrow.

  “Then how about three time’s a charm?” he said, using the pad of his thumb to wipe a stray teardrop from her cheek.

  She shook her head. “Not three’s the charm. It’s three strikes and you’re out. I’m going back to Houston, Alain. Monday morning. I don�
��t know when I’ll be back.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “NOTHING in that fridge is going to mutate into anything else while you’re standing there with the door open.”

  “What?”

  “I thought you told me Grandma Yvonne put righteous fear into you about standing in front of an open refrigerator door?”

  Alain twisted his head to regard his son lounging against the kitchen door frame, then looked back at the contents of the refrigerator and blinked. How long had he been standing there staring into space? “Sorry. My mind was somewhere else.” He grabbed a bottle of water and shut the door with a snap.

  “Did Dana call while I was out?”

  Alain twisted the cap off the bottle of overpriced water with more violence than necessary. “No.”

  “It’s Saturday night. They’ve been gone since Thursday. How long are you going to wait?” Guy’s tone wasn’t combative enough to call him on, but he was coming close.

  “I gave your mother until seven o’clock tomorrow evening to have her home.” He sat down at the kitchen table and made a pretense of rolling back the cuffs of his faded plaid shirt. He took another swallow of water, waiting for Guy’s next move.

  His son snorted in disgust, but came to sit beside him at the kitchen table instead of turning on his heel and stomping out of the room. The kid hadn’t exactly been avoiding him for the last couple of days, but he’d sure made himself scarce when Alain was around the house.

  “I just tried Mom’s cell again. It’s turned off.” So that was it. He was worrying about Dana. It was unusual for him to stick around the house on a Saturday evening. He was generally off with friends, watching videos, playing computer games, hanging out at the General Store to watch the girls watching the guys as they bought sodas and snacks and rented videos for sleepovers.

  He ran with a good bunch of kids, so Alain didn’t worry too much about what they were up to, but he realized things were about to change. Guy would have a driver’s license in another six months, and so would the other kids. They were going to want to start wandering farther afield than the General Store or one of their friends’ rec rooms. They’d want to go to Lafayette to the movies or on fast-food binges. And there would be car dates with girls. Lord, where had the time gone?