A Billion Reasons Why (23 page)

“No, you still have all that money, your private jet—” She didn’t have the strength to say any more.

“Money won’t ruin us, Katie. I promise you. There’s no reason to fear it. You can start your own foundation, give it away any way you see fit.”

“It’s not the money I fear.”

“You can’t marry Dexter. If you found out that Dexter kissed a woman as passionately as you kissed me yesterday, would you marry him?”

She went numb. Of all the things he might have said . . . “Just because I made an error in judgment doesn’t mean I should relinquish my whole future. A kiss isn’t that powerful. You’re only trying to confuse me.”

“Am I?”

His cell phone kept ringing. He closed in on her again. She smelled his delicious light cologne and she felt his warmth and was suddenly transported to eight years prior.
I love you, Luc. I always have. Always will
.

“Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.” He touched her chin. “When Bogie says that line, he’s telling Ilsa,
I see you
.
I know who you are and why you have to go
. I know who
you
are, Katie. Inside. I know what makes you the most beautiful woman on earth. I know you can’t live a passionless life. If I’d said yes all those years ago, this anger over your father would be in our marriage. Solve this with me. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us. You need to forgive me and understand I only had your best interests at heart. I still do.”

“You’re not going to try and tell me you did me a favor?”

“You wanted to escape the pain of your father’s death, Katie. Admit it. You used me as a salve, and I let you that one night and then you questioned my motives from then on. When I said no to you, you would cry, but you still cried over the wrong thing.” He stepped back, and she looked at her feet rather than admit any of his words were true. “I see you, Katie, and I will always love you. But you’ve told yourself you were being loyal to your father all these years, didn’t you?”

“Did it bother you when you learned I was engaged? Did you care that I dated? Where were you, Luc?” She pounded on his chest. “You come into my life every year or so to update me with a bullet point memo on your life, like I’m some Christmas card recipient? And I should have felt I was one of the special ones because I got a phone call and a real signed card, not a printed one?”

“I see the woman I love, the only woman I’ve loved, making a mistake. I’m trying to stop you from doing it. You don’t love Dexter Hastings, and you never will. Don’t bother lying to me. I can see it in your eyes.”

“It never occurs to you that you might be wrong, does it, Luc? Does that confidence come with being a billionaire?”

“No, it comes at the multimillionaire stage, apparently. What’s it going to take to prove it to you?” Luc looked at her with those deep blue eyes, and her stomach fluttered.

She held out her hand. “I’ll take my ring now.”

Luc snapped the hinge closed, and the ring disappeared. “Poindexter can come and get it from me.”

“You can’t do that. It belongs to me.”

“It belongs to you when you get married, and you told me yourself you’re not engaged yet. Let Poindexter come ask me for it. If he’s man enough.”

“He’s not going to do that! He shouldn’t have to do that!”

“Your father gave the ring to me. I’d say Poindexter does have to do it.”

She should tell him the marriage was off, but her blasted pride kept rearing its ugly head. “Stop calling him that! You’re behaving like a child.” She straightened her spine. “All right, we’re going to play like this, are we? Give me the ring or I’m not singing at your brother’s wedding.” She placed her flattened palm in his face.

“I’ll hire Harry Connick, Jr. He’s in town this weekend.”

“You do that.” Katie smoothed her skirt and picked up the gift Mam had wrapped so carefully for Olivia. Gift-wrapping was a Southern skill she never could seem to master. She turned to Luc, who followed closely behind. “You can make this as difficult on me as you please, Luc DeForges, but you won’t break me. My fiancé can buy me another ring if you choose to keep mine. Maybe I’ll make a visit to your brother Jem’s store tomorrow.”

“Katie, battle me all you want, I can take it, but don’t dig yourself into a hole to fight me.”

“Wish me luck. I’m off to see your mother.”

“What about practice?”

“Maybe you should ask Harry Connick, Jr. to practice with the band today.”

She stepped out into the excruciating heat and leaned against the building’s wall, letting her pulse slow. She wanted to just swallow her pride, jump off the cliff, and go back and shout
yes!
Yes, she would marry him. Instead, she did what the new, reserved Katie McKenna always did. She went where she was supposed to be, on time, gift in hand.

Chapter 17

A
LL OF
M
E

Y
OU
A
RE
C
ORDIALLY
I
NVITED TO

A L
UNCHEON
B
RIDAL
S
HOWER

T
O
H
ONOR

M
ISS
O
LIVIA
T
YLER
,

T
HE
F
UTURE
M
RS
. R
YAN
D
EFORGES

W
EDNESDAY,
J
UNE
9
TH AT
T
WELVE
O
’CLOCK IN THE
A
FTERNOON

G
IVEN BY
S
TACY
G
IBBONS,

M
AID OF
H
ONOR

A
T THE
H
OME OF
M
RS.
A
IMÉE
D
E
F
ORGES

R.S.V.P. 555.4232

At one time a luncheon at the DeForges mansion would have sent Katie into a panic, but she took it in stride as part and parcel on the road to closure. She was living fearlessly, no worries about what some man expected of her. Mrs. DeForges garnered no power over her anymore, and the house never had. She hated its cavernous rooms and stark beige interior—there wasn’t a hint of warmth in the place to make it a home. She wondered if a coat of salmon paint wouldn’t do the DeForges family some good.

She took the streetcar to the infamous estate, dressed in the most inconspicuous dress she’d brought with her: a gray boat-neck, shantung silk with a tight bodice and full A-line skirt. With the shoes, she’d only paid fifteen dollars for the outfit at a secondhand store, and she felt compelled to tell Mrs. DeForges about her bargain. It wasn’t difficult to see where Luc had gotten his negotiating skills; for all her wealth, Aimée DeForges loved a good bargain. If you complimented her on a piece of furniture, she’d tell you the price and bartering skills she used to buy it. Luc used to say she’d find a way to tell the deal she’d gotten on her casket when the day came.

“Luc tells me you live in a shotgun house down in the Channel. When did your parents buy that house?”

“I don’t know. Before I was born.”

“And how old are you now?” Mrs. DeForges asked.

“Eighteen,” she’d said.

“Eighteen!” Mrs. DeForges looked to Ryan. “Is this girl old enough to be in the college Bible study?”

“I started college at seventeen,” she’d explained.

“Very well. So your parents probably paid about . . .” The older woman drummed her fingers on her chin. “About twenty-five thousand dollars for that house, and now, if it’s in good shape, they probably . . . Do you know what their mortgage is?”

“Ma!” Luc had snapped.

“I don’t know,” Katie said again, sheepishly.

“All in all, an excellent bargain. There is no better moneymaker than staying in your home. You tell your parents for me they’ve made wonderful choices.”

“I will, ma’am.”

Aimée DeForges kept a dark, dirty little secret behind the walls of her great mansion. There were very few people in town who knew that Aimée, with a French pronunciation, had grown up near the Warehouse District as plain old Amy Aucoin. Mam said the wealthy socialite would never go back to that life again, and putting a price on everything was Mrs. DeForges’ way of finding her value in life.

Katie approached the arched sandstone exterior, which looked more like a city museum than a home, and shifted her gift from one hip to the other. “Here goes nothing.” She pressed the doorbell, which chimed for an eternity until a Creole woman answered the door dressed in a frilly white uniform that not only looked ridiculous but harkened back to another era. She wondered if Mrs. DeForges wasn’t taking the forties theme a little far.

“Mornin,’ miss. May I take the gift?”

Katie passed off the box, which was a collection of 1940s big band and swing CDs and some candles Mam had lying around the house. She’d wrapped them all in pink cellophane, so it appeared more celebratory than her teacher’s salary could afford.

“The ladies are all in the salon. Come this way.”

Katie passed the ornate dining room with its carved mahogany ceiling and seating for too many to count. It was a pity someone had to dust that thing continually. Her mam would
use
a table like that. Luc told her Mrs. DeForges hadn’t entertained since that horrible night Katie caused the family “great embarrassment,” as his mother had put it.
Great embarrassment for whom?
she’d thought at the time, but she was so traumatized by the experience she’d just nodded and apologized.

She’d prayed up a storm that morning for the stamina to keep a smile plastered on her face and reminded herself that she needed to face her fears. Otherwise she’d be forever defined as the girl who’d ruined Luc’s graduation party and announced her loss of innocence to New Orleans society at large. She steeled herself as she stood beneath the great arched entryway to the salon. No music played in the background, and the room appeared as cavernous and stark as ever. Not so much as a streamer hung from the ceiling, and not one of the maybe twenty people in the room had a drink or an hors d’oeuvre in hand.

Olivia saw her coming and hurried over. “Katie, you made it!” She took the gift from the maid. “You didn’t have to bring anything. I just wanted you to come.”

Two steps below, several faces gazed up at her. She recognized Mrs. DeForges, of course, with her dark, penetrating eyes that didn’t miss a trick and the wispy, silver-blond expensive haircut.

“Mrs. DeForges,” Katie said in her best drawl. “It’s been so many years since I’ve seen you, and you look wonderful. You haven’t aged a day. Thank you so much for inviting me.”

“Thank you, dear.” Mrs. DeForges addressed the other guests. “Katie here was once in the college Bible study I taught. Look what a lovely young lady she’s grown into.”

“Is that so? I never knew you taught a class, Mrs. DeForges,” someone said above the murmurs.

“I wasn’t always this old.” Mrs. DeForges laughed. “No, I used to have a lot more life in me, and teaching the Lord’s Word gave me such pleasure.”

“No doubt. It’s the small contributions in life we remember,” an older woman, with a name tag that read
Mrs. Fredrickson,
said. “Katie, you are such a beautiful girl. That red hair. You can’t buy that in a bottle.”

Katie smiled politely.

Mrs. DeForges spoke again. “I do believe all of my sons were in love with Katie at one time or another.”

“Oh, I think that’s an exaggeration.”

“It most certainly isn’t,” Mrs. DeForges said. “That’s why Katie will be singing in Ryan and Olivia’s wedding. She and Ryan used to perform together at college and then at that horrible bar. Won’t that be lovely for Ryan? She knew him when he first toyed with the idea of show business.”

Katie stepped into the living room and looked about for a seat. She was making her way to a solitary French chair when Mrs. DeForges stopped her.

“Not that one!” The older woman dropped her painfully thin arms, marbled by blue veins, and regained her composure as the rest of the women stared at her. “It’s an antique.”

“Sit here,” Olivia said, offering her seat. “I’ll sit next to my mam.”

“Not everyone will be able to see you open the gifts from the sofa,” Mrs. DeForges said. “Katie, why don’t you sit on the sofa where Olivia is, and she can come over here to this chair.”

Mrs. DeForges pointed out a French tapestry chair similar to the one Katie tried to sit in, but apparently it wasn’t as valuable. Either that, or Olivia would inflict less damage upon it.

“Jennifer,” Mrs. DeForges said to one of the bridesmaids, “you sit at the end of the sofa there so you can see the gifts well to make a list for thank-you notes. Stacy, you’re in the middle where you can monitor the games. There, that’s better.” Having arranged the guests to her satisfaction, Mrs. DeForges finally sat herself.

The shower consisted of a majority of older women and a few younger ones, obviously friends of the bride. Katie felt as much out of her element as a po’ boy amidst Oysters Rockefeller, but she took Olivia’s seat, if for no other reason than it was the farthest away from Mrs. DeForges.