by Kara Lennox
“They might be. And pumpkin bread. And some toffee-crunch coffee cake.”
He pulled a rag from the back pocket of his faded jeans and shined up the globe before climbing down. “Is this to make up for the rest of the week? Three deliveries, not a single free sample.”
“That wasn’t on purpose. I was so busy this week I didn’t have time to bake extras. But this is a peace offering.”
He gave her about half a grin, which nonetheless sent her stomach swooping. How did he do that?
“They’ll go better with coffee.”
They went back downstairs and Luc poured them each a mug. She took a sip of the rich brew, as if it were a shot of whiskey for courage. “I’ve handled things badly.”
“You won’t get any argument from me.” Luc looked out the window, obviously feeling as uncomfortable as she did. “If it was a mistake, just tell me. But don’t make me guess. I keep wondering what I did wrong.”
“Oh, Luc, you did everything just right, believe me.”
“Is this going to be one of those, ‘It’s me, not you’ speeches?”
“Well, it’s definitely not you. But it’s not exactly me, either.”
“Who does that leave?” But before she could explain, he got it. “Oh. Zara.”
“Yeah.”
“She…doesn’t approve of me?” Luc was only half joking.
“No, just the opposite. She thinks you’re perfect daddy material.”
If Loretta hadn’t been so miserable, the look of panic on Luc’s face would have made her laugh. “She said that? You didn’t tell her…I mean, she doesn’t know what—”
“I didn’t say a word. But children can figure out more than we give them credit for sometimes. She senses something between us. But I had no idea she’d spun it into an elaborate fantasy.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her she was out of line, that there was no chance.”
LUC KNEW HE SHOULD HAVE felt nothing but relief that Loretta understood him so well. He was crazy about her and Zara both, but he wasn’t family-man material. He never stayed in one place, for one thing. He changed jobs a lot, usually because he got tired of the same place and the same people all the time, and his income was erratic—he could be rolling in money one month and counting his pennies the next.
Although his mother loved him, she’d been gone a lot, working long hours to pay the bills and, later, going to school so she could get a better job. She’d also gone through a series of men after his father left, pinning her hopes on each one, then feeling crushed when they didn’t meet her expectations. Luc simply hadn’t been born with the constancy gene that made a good husband or father.
But, as perverse as it was, the fact that Loretta had dismissed the possibility so quickly irked him. Was he that bad of a catch? He used to get two or three marriage proposals a year. Okay, they were mostly women wanting a green-card marriage, but still.
“I don’t know if I did the right thing,” Loretta said, “but I can’t have her getting her hopes up only to have them dashed. I had no idea she felt the absence of a father so keenly. She doesn’t remember Jim at all.”
“She wants me to fill the father role?” The notion seemed very strange to him. He’d been on friendly terms with children before, but he’d never had one take a liking to him the way Zara had.
“You’ve been good to her. You don’t condescend to her. Most adults treat her like a baby, and she’s quite aware of that.”
“I don’t know how to treat her any differently.”
“And I wouldn’t want you to,” Loretta hastened to say. “But under the circumstances, maybe it’s best if we quit while we’re ahead. I don’t regret that we made love. It was wonderful. You made me feel beautiful and desirable in a way I haven’t felt since before Zara was born. But I don’t think it’s meant to be.”
Her words had the sound of a well-rehearsed speech. And he didn’t like it, not at all, even though he knew Loretta was right. They had no future, and she wouldn’t want him, anyway if she knew he was on probation for a felony. Besides, he wouldn’t be staying in Indigo much past the first of next year…. Still, he didn’t like what Loretta was saying one bit.
“Zara’s a smart girl,” Luc said against his better judgment. “We could explain things to her.”
“And tell her what, exactly? That we’re having a temporary fling?” She shook her head vehemently. “That’s not the sort of example I want to set for my daughter. How can I expect her to understand that she should avoid casual sex when she sees her mother embracing it?”
Luc wanted to object to the words “fling” and “casual.” What they shared sure didn’t feel like that to him.
“How about we tell her we just don’t know where it’s going, but we want to find out? We like and respect each other, we want to spend time together….”
“When there’s no chance of it working out in the long term?”
Was that true? Was there absolutely no chance?
“I plan to live in Indigo the rest of my life,” she said. “I got my rolling-stone urges out of my system a long time ago. This is my home, Zara’s home. The bayou country is in my blood. You’ll be moving along, and don’t even try to deny it.”
He sighed. She’d made her case, damn it. The mere thought of tying himself down to one place made him feel uncomfortable. It was true he’d felt no particular urge to leave Indigo, even after more than a year, which surprised him. But how much longer would that last?
Luc drained the last of his coffee. “Living in the moment isn’t always a bad thing.”
“I know that. And there was a time I did live in the moment. When Jim and I first married, we lived out of our car, moving across the country picking produce for grocery money. I sure didn’t think about the future then. We had a lot of fun, and I don’t regret it. Not all of it, anyway.”
Luc had a hard time picturing Loretta as a drifter. She was so deeply rooted in Indigo now.
“But there’s a time for being responsible, and for me, that time started when Zara was born. Maybe when she’s grown I can be a little crazy, but not now.”
“So we just go back to the way we were? Feeling the pull and doing nothing about it?”
“I don’t see any alternative.”
Luc knew he couldn’t go back. Now that he knew what Loretta’s skin felt like, what she smelled like, the little noises she made in the heat of passion, he couldn’t go back. Memories of their lovemaking would haunt him every time he saw her.
Or even when she was nowhere near.
“If you want to, you can find someone else to provide your baked goods—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re asking me to give up your delectable body, but don’t make me swear off cranberry-orange muffins, too. Have mercy.”
Finally she cracked a smile. “Thank you for not hating me.”
“I could never hate you, Loretta. I saw what hate and bitterness did to my father, and I won’t do that to myself. My motto is forgive and move on. Though I guess technically you haven’t done anything wrong, except let me talk you into bed.”
Her smile faded. “You won’t tempt me again, will you?”
“Would it work?”
She sighed. “Probably.”
But he wouldn’t feel good about it. “I’ll be on my best behavior when I’m around you. Fair warning, though. My best behavior isn’t exactly stellar.”
She pushed back her chair. “I really have to go. I have a zillion things to do for the festival.”
The music festival. Luc had agreed to share a combined booth with Loretta and her family, and he’d promised Celeste he would make their display look like a museum. The only step he’d taken so far was to buy the boat so he could advertise the bayou cruises. “We also need to decide how we want to do our booth.”
She gasped. “I forgot completely. I’ve been so busy dealing with everyone else’s booths—”
“I can work it out with your parents. Y
ou have enough to worry about.”
She extracted a bulging Filofax from her purse and pored over the calendar. “I can’t just dump it on y’all. Can we meet on Sunday?”
Luc had a packed house over the weekend, but he agreed, anyway. “You sure you don’t need any help before then?”
She stood decisively. “You’ve done so much already. Getting Melanie to agree to do the dinner has been a huge coup. I can handle the rest.”
He stood, too. “Thanks for the goodies. You’re going to make me fat.”
“Hmph. Not likely.”
They shook hands, which seemed ridiculously formal after all they’d shared. But the gesture served to seal their agreement, so it was the right thing to do. She left quickly, without looking back, and Luc watched her beat-up station wagon depart down the long drive, his heart heavy.
LUC HAD UNEXPECTED walk-in guests arrive that afternoon, so he called and left Loretta a message to bring a few goodies the following morning. The sound of her voice on the taped greeting gave his heart a brief lift, but then his mood plummeted.
He didn’t like the way things had turned out. In the past, if a relationship with a woman went south, he simply moved on to the next one. But of course, here in Indigo there wasn’t exactly a crowd of eligible, good-looking women looking to warm up the sheets with him.
Not that there weren’t some pretty ones. Joan Bateman, a best-selling mystery author who’d made her home in Indigo, was attractive in a mature sort of way. He’d noticed her when he’d first moved here. But she was older than him, and, anyway, she’d recently become engaged to her literary agent. Then there was Sophie Clarkson, who’d come to Indigo a few months ago to settle the affairs of her godmother. Luc had felt a kinship with the woman almost instantly, since she was from the city and something of an outsider, like him. But she’d had a teenage romance years ago with Indigo’s Chief of Police, Alain Boudreaux, and they were now married and expecting their first child.
And Marjo Savoy, who ran the local funeral parlor, was downright beautiful, but he’d had no interest in any of the local women after meeting Loretta. And now that she had eliminated any possibility of an affair…he still wasn’t interested.
Thinking about Loretta, he realized that for the first time since he had opened La Petite Maison, she was late. Fortunately he hadn’t eaten all of the goodies she’d brought the day before, and they were still fresh, so his guests were well supplied. But as the morning wore on and Loretta didn’t show, he became worried.
He knew it wasn’t his place to check on her. He had no right to feel protective or proprietary toward Loretta. But he did.
When he returned from taking his guests for a boat ride on the Bayou Teche, where they were fortunate enough to see a six-foot alligator sunning on the shore, neither Loretta nor her baked goods had arrived.
He called her.
She answered her phone, breathless, and when he said his name, there was a long silence before she finally spoke. “I can’t believe I completely forgot to deliver your order.”
“Don’t worry about it, I managed,” he said, relieved she wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere. “I was concerned about you.”
“I am so sorry. You just cannot believe how crazy my day has been. I’ve been inundated with calls from restaurants all over the state wanting to sell food at the music festival. Marjo told me not to turn anyone down who’s legitimate, but we’re outgrowing our space. The people who are building the booths want to charge extra for overtime, the health inspector is on my case about permits and inspections—” She halted abruptly. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be dumping this on you. Your next order is on the house, okay?”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Still.”
Luc wanted to prolong the conversation, but he could tell she was in a hurry, so he said goodbye. But it wasn’t like Loretta to forget a delivery. He hoped she wasn’t in over her head with the festival. Being in the hotel business, he had some experience with special-events planning, and he knew how quickly preparations could spin out of control.
Loretta showed up the next day at her usual time, but she didn’t linger to chat as she used to do. She delivered her basket, picked up the empty one and bolted. Luc hoped it was because she was busy and not because she no longer wanted to spend time with him. Even if friendship was all he could hope for, he didn’t want to lose that.
The next day it was the same thing. She zoomed in, gravel spraying from her tires, dropped off his order, and was gone. Luc was going into severe withdrawal. He tried to tell himself it was better this way, a clean break, but he couldn’t convince himself.
The ache in his chest that wouldn’t go away was as alien to him as the spicy Cajun food had been when he’d first moved to Louisiana. He’d gotten used to the food and had come to love it. But the pain of losing Loretta before he’d even really had her—he wasn’t sure he could ever get used to that. He was reluctant to analyze what that meant, but the realization that any woman could do this to him was almost more upsetting than the situation itself.
By Saturday he didn’t have time to think about Loretta or anyone else other than the guests at La Petite Maison. Every room was full except for the attic suite. By that afternoon, it would be occupied, too. As soon as the breakfast dishes were washed and put away, it was time to get started on lunch. Some of the guests had paid extra for a gourmet picnic under the shade of a two-hundred-year-old live oak. The picnic was another of his experiments, something else he could advertise at the festival.
As he was cleaning up the leftovers after lunch, something caught his eye down on the banks of the bayou. A flash of bright red hair.
His immediate thought was of Loretta, of course. But as he craned his neck and tried to get another glimpse, the figure near the water came into view again and he realized the person was much too small to be Loretta.
Concern for Zara welled up inside him. Should she be playing so close to the water’s edge? The bayou was beautiful, but dangerous, too. He hadn’t forgotten about the alligator, which could eat Zara in two bites.
He abandoned the picnic leftovers and went to investigate. He came across her purple bike first, lying on its side where she’d left it when the ground got too muddy. Then he found Zara, looking adorable in little overalls and a sunny yellow shirt. Her beautiful hair was unbound. Luc had never seen her without her pigtails.
She squatted near the river’s edge, peering at something.
“Zara?”
She turned and saw him, and a big smile lit up her face. “Luc!”
“Hey, gorgeous. Are you here by yourself?”
“I’m a big girl. I don’t need a babysitter.”
He supposed a nine-year-old could be on her own for short periods, at least in a small town where everyone watched out for each other. But not this close to the bayou.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a nonaccusatory way, just curious.
“Catching crawdads. I’m helping Mama. She said Bryan Givens is giving her fits because he wants to sell her crawdads for her dinner, but he won’t say how many or how much they cost.”
“Crawdads” were what the locals called crawfish, the tiny, lobsterlike critters that were a mainstay of the Cajun diet. Luc had not developed a taste for them—it was too much work to get that tiny piece of meat out of the shell—and he felt nauseous every time he saw someone sucking on a detached crayfish head, which was what Louisianans did. But the local specialty was an integral part of Loretta’s authentic Cajun feast.
“Got one!” Zara announced, and he saw now that she was watching a crayfish mound, into which she’d dropped a string. She slowly pulled on the string until the crayfish popped out. “See, they’re so dumb, they latch onto that little bit o’bacon and they won’t let go.” She grabbed her prize and dropped it into a bucket, where it joined about half a dozen of its neighbors.
Zara would have to catch a few hundred more if she wanted to make a dent in her mother’s crawfish
requirements, but Luc thought the effort was sweet.
“That’s real noble of you to want to help out, but I’m a little worried about you down here by yourself.”
“Why? I can swim. Like a fish, Granddaddy says.”
He didn’t want to scare Zara, but he felt obligated to explain to her about the danger. “I saw an alligator not far from here a few days ago.”
But she wasn’t afraid. He should have known. “I want to see the alligator!” She peered hopefully out into the murky water.
“You probably wouldn’t be able to see it. It looks just like a log—until it pops out of the water and grabs you.”
“Ew.”
“How about I fix you a snack? Have you had lunch?”
“No, I sort of forgot. What kind of snack?”
“Brie cheese and grapes?” He had some left over from the picnic. “But you’ll have to help me carry in the picnic things.”
“Cool. Okay.” She grabbed her bucket, and they walked to the live oak tree. There wasn’t much left to take in. He gave Zara a plastic sack containing the leftover food, then he gathered up the tablecloth and they walked together up to the cottage.
Some of the guests had gathered on the back veranda to sit in the rocking chairs and enjoy the fine weather. Two older women took one look at Zara and began fawning over her, which she endured stoically. Cute as she was, she probably got this type of attention a lot.
“What’s your name, honey?” one woman asked.
“How old are you?”
“What’s in the bucket?”
“That’s a mighty pretty pair of tennis shoes.”
“Don’t be shy, now.”
After Zara politely answered their questions, one of the ladies looked up at Luc and beamed. “You have a beautiful daughter, and so sweet and bright.”
Luc was shocked at the feeling that welled up in him. In fact, for a split second, it had felt like Zara was his. And he’d experienced a surge of pride—as if she really were his daughter.
CHAPTER NINE
