Going All Out (17 page)

It broke something—the laws of probability, for starters. “Okay, let’s say for curiosity’s sake I’m willing to entertain that you haven’t completely lost your mind. Why do you think he’s writing me?”

Tally grinned a fast grin and smacked her hand down on the open day planner. “Why don’t you write back and ask?”

L
UCAS DROVE THROUGH
the arrival gate at the airport. He’d driven Josie’s hatchback, which, unlike Max’s Porsche, held enough space for several people and a few suitcases.

After circling through the gate twice, he thought about parking, but as he was about to steer onto the ramp leading to the short-term lot, his cell phone jangled an incoming call. Glancing at the display, he found a text message from Max.

On our way.

Lucas made his way around one more time and slid into the idling traffic in front of the airline doors. He wasn’t there long enough to draw the attention of the security guard when he spotted them.

The hydraulic doors whooshed open and the newlyweds strolled through, Max managing a garment bag and a huge rolling suitcase while still keeping a possessive arm around Josie. His baby sister snuggled against her new husband, her face alight with laughter, looking as though she was living her dream.

Lucas knew she was. And maybe that was what made the moment so memorable. That, and how glad he was to see two people he cared about so happy. Lucas and Max might have let their friendship go ten years ago, but after making amends, those years were forgotten. They’d grown up together, more brothers than friends, and that bond surged to the forefront now.

In the short time since his sister and Max had become engaged, Lucas had realized that he’d never filled the empty place Max had left in his life. There were lots of empty places he was discovering. And too much discontent. He’d been trying to outrun boredom rather than filling his life with things that mattered, things that would challenge and content him.

Life was about people to care for, about being cared for. He hadn’t remembered that until returning home, until seeing Josie and Max start their future, until thinking about how they’d all grown up in the court together and how life had spread them apart.

But no more. He’d found his best friend again and now he wanted to know what life would be like with Bree in it.

Slipping the car into park, he got out. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. and Mrs. LeClerc.”

“I like the sound of that.” Josie blew him a kiss.

As they approached, Max extended his hand.

“Hey, bro-in-law,” Lucas said. “Glad to see the blushing bride didn’t kill you.”

“Not for lack of trying.”

Josie flung her arms around Lucas’s neck and hugged him tight. “I plan to enjoy my husband for a good long time.”

He kissed her, feeling more nostalgic than he remembered ever feeling. “Glad you two had a good time.”

“We can say the same to you since you’re still in town.” Max gave him a knowing smile. “Ever going home?”

“Wouldn’t dream of missing Mardi Gras.”

“Since when?” Josie said. “We want the scoop, Lucas. All of it. You can fill us in on the way home.”

As the airport was in Metairie, he’d have a captive audience on the drive back into the city. Lucas popped open the hatch and helped Max load the luggage inside. Sure enough, Josie began the drill before he even pulled into traffic.

“So what’s going on with the float?” she asked. “I don’t have to tell you I’ve been freaking out.”

Lucas laughed. “You called daily for reports. What were you freaking out about?”

“She didn’t believe anything you told her,” Max explained. “She figured you were telling her what she wanted to hear so she wouldn’t hop an early flight.”

“I hear about your trip first,” he said, “or I don’t tell you a thing about the float and I’ll lie about everything I’ve been doing.”

“You would, too,” Josie retorted, but he didn’t have to ask again before being regaled with honeymoon stories.

For two people who were obviously crazy about each other, Josie and Max had gotten out to see the sights
more than Lucas would have expected. He and Bree hadn’t made it to the plantation once while they’d been at Félicie Allée.

Maybe because they knew they only had a few nights together, while Josie and Max would get a lifetime.

Before, when Lucas had thought about his whole life, the years had stretched before him like an eternity. But sitting in this car, facing a return trip to Pescadero, those years didn’t sound like forever. They sounded like a finite number to be handled judiciously.

How many months might pass before he returned? His family was due for Christmas at his place this year, so he probably wouldn’t make it back before Mardi Gras next year.

Suddenly he could imagine all the things that might happen in a year. Josie could get pregnant and actually give birth to his new little niece or nephew. Not that the new LeClercs had shared any plans to have kids in the near future, but if they wanted to they could.

Suddenly California seemed a lot farther away than he’d ever thought it before.

“There’s really not much left to tell,” Max finally said.

“I’m sure there’s more, but it’s not anything I’d want to hear.” Lucas shifted his gaze off the road and eyed them meaningfully.

“You’re a laugh a minute,” Josie said. “Don’t think you’ll get off that easily. We filled up three memory sticks with pictures. Just wait until I get to my computer.”

“Wishing you made that flight about now?” Max asked.

“You know, I don’t think five hundred pictures of ‘Oh, and here we are standing underneath a banana tree’ is such a raw deal for letting me camp out in your place while you were off honeymooning.”

Max leveled a razor-blue stare his way. “Your turn.”

“Have you been spending any time with Bree?” Josie asked.

There was no deliberation about how much to tell them. There was no question. He wanted their opinions and their help. “We’ve been spending all our time together.”

Josie hiked her knee up on the seat. Max leaned into the front, and they both waited for him to start talking.

He gave them a rundown about how he’d met Bree, his invitation to the ball and their subsequent trip out of town.

“What was she doing climbing my wall to get into the court?” Josie wanted to know. “She lives right on the entrance.”

“That’s the million-dollar question. She told me someone spooked her while she was walking home from work.”

“You don’t believe her?” Max asked.

He shook his head. “I believe her. She told me that she had it under control.”

Lucas explained what he’d walked in on at the den just that morning and how he’d followed up his suspicions. He explained about Jude Robicheaux.

“She won’t talk to me, and trust me, I’ve been giving her every opportunity. She just keeps telling me to trust her.”

“You think this guy is the one who sent her into your yard?” Max asked.

Lucas nodded. “I’d bet money on it. But I don’t know what to do to get her to talk to me. I could confront her with what I found out online.”

“Why are you so surprised she won’t talk, Lucas?” Josie asked, her voice soft-edged and concerned above the steady hum of the engine. “You’ve barely known her a
week. Don’t you think you’re asking her to move a little fast here?”

“We’re not…casual.” He didn’t know how else to put
that
without getting into all the details. “I can’t really explain it, but we’re operating on an abbreviated time frame. I think we’re soul mates.”

“Soul mates?” Josie exchanged a glance with Max. “Does Bree share this assessment?”

He shook his head, irritated with her whole cautious demeanor. “We haven’t discussed it.”

Josie sighed. “Listen to me, Lucas. I see a couple of problems here. You have no clue what sort of relationship Bree had with this man and you can’t bully her into telling you. I’m qualified to make that assessment.”

As a licensed therapist who worked for social services, Josie did indeed offer a professional opinion.

“Then what do you suggest?”

“Be supportive. Be open to listen if she wants to talk, but back off with the rest of this. Going behind her back and digging into her past isn’t going to help. Bree knows this guy. If she wants your help, she’ll ask. You’ve got to respect that she knows what’s best and trust her.”

“What if she’s in over her head?”

Josie reached out and touched his arm reassuringly. “If Bree is in over her head, then you can’t force her to admit it. You can only support her, Lucas. You can’t make her stand up to him. She’s the only one who can decide to stand up for herself.”

“You’re telling me to stand by when she might get hurt?”

“I’m telling you not to bully her. Sounds to me like she’s had enough of that already.” Josie forced a smile. “For what it’s worth, I’m acquainted with Bree. She has
never once struck me as an abuse victim. You don’t know what’s happening between her and this guy.”

Lucas didn’t reply as he maneuvered through late-night traffic and merged southbound, considering what Josie had said. The situation kept turning over and over in his head. He couldn’t see clearly, and whenever this happened with work, he usually packed up his laptop and gave his head a rest. But Bree wasn’t some technical problem he had to think his way out of.

“I understand what you’re saying, Josie,” he finally said. “And I respect your opinion. But I’m not going to let Bree be harassed by this guy because I haven’t known her long enough for her to trust me.”

He caught Max’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “I need your help. I can’t tail her 24/7 or she’ll know something’s up. Will you give me a hand keeping an eye on her?”

Those deep blue eyes met his and a lifetime of understanding passed between them in a glance. “You know it.”

Lucas inclined his head.

“You two aren’t hearing a word I’m saying,” Josie said angrily. “You can’t play Bree’s around-the-clock bodyguards.”

“Yes, we can.”

When Josie folded her arms over her chest and shot disapproving glances between them, Lucas found himself feeling a little better. At least the dynamics of this relationship didn’t change no matter how old they got.

W
HAT DO YOU WANT
from me?

Gabriel read the words Breanne had written in her journal, considered her sudden reversal when all along she hadn’t believed her twin’s claims of his existence.

Yet there was no question why she’d taken this leap of faith. The reason sat on a boudoir chair before the window looking serenely smug with her hands overflowing with a beautiful gown and sewing pins.

“Of course I won’t leave you,” Tallis said. “But I don’t think it’ll be long until you get your answer. The captain’s here. I can feel him.”

Breanne gave a nervous laugh. “Not only can you see him but you can feel him, too. What, did you inherit this little talent from Uncle Guidry when he left us the town house?”

“Ha, ha. No talent needed. Can’t you feel the cold?”

Bree frowned. Tallis stretched her leg out and made a sweeping motion, passing her foot right through his knees. “He’s right here. I only know that because I’ve actually felt the temperature drop when he showed up.”

“Just be forewarned…if a ghost materializes in my bedroom, I’ll probably bolt.”

Tallis laughed. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Aside from the fact that I haven’t seen him since he successfully played matchmaker for me and Christien—” she motioned to the journal opened on the night table, her diamond engagement ring glinting in the light “—if he could appear to you, then why would he be writing?”

Breanne cast a narrowed gaze at the journal in question, apparently considering. “Well…good. Why you and Christien and not me?”

“Haven’t a clue. But I don’t think Uncle Guidry ever saw him either.”

“Then why’d he say the place was haunted?”

“Because the place is haunted. Maybe he felt the cold, too. I never asked. But didn’t you say the captain started winging stuff around after he left the message?”

Gabriel couldn’t resist. Gathering all his focus, he knocked a small box from the dresser. It toppled to the floor, landing on the edge of the rug with a soft thump.

Tallis smiled. “Like that.”

Breanne sank onto the edge of the bed, fairly swooning.

Gabriel sent an envelope sailing off the dresser for good measure, and she jumped.

Tallis laughed.

“Child man,” a familiar voice snapped, and had Gabriel been of corporeal form he might have blushed for being caught in such foolishness. Except he wouldn’t give the crone the satisfaction.

“So how will you reply, pirate?”
belle grand-mère
asked. “You have our very great-granddaughters’ attention. Now what do you plan to do.”

“Break the curse. Dare I hope you might be tired of this eternal restlessness? Or do you truly want to spend another two hundred years suffering my company to have your revenge?”

He saw some emotion flicker across that withered face, prayed she might be mellowing. He hadn’t considered any fate but his own, yet the whole two-souls-bound-together-in-the-curse thing couldn’t have been pleasant for her either. Of course,
belle grand-mère
had chosen her path.

Oy, the misguided notions of righteousness.

He might have laughed, but as he stared into the face of the woman who had been his only companion for centuries, nothing about the situation felt amusing.

“So I ask again, what are you going to do?” she queried.

“Break the curse.”

“So you’ve said. They’re waiting.”

“I know.” Gabriel affected just the right tone of bravado—which he was not feeling at all, unfortunately.

He had been giving a great deal of thought to how he might convince Breanne to trust Lucas and give herself to love. She wouldn’t find another man her equal. The auras didn’t lie.

He’d learned that lesson the hard way.

And as Gabriel stared at his beautiful descendent, her aura fading back to the lifeless pewter color it would remain if she didn’t give her heart over to love, he realized his only chance to convince her meant teaching the lesson he’d spent two centuries learning.

Which meant owning up to every bad decision he had made in life and facing that so many had shared in the consequences.

Casting his gaze between his beautiful descendents and the withered old crone who had sacrificed herself to make him pay for his sins, Gabriel knew a shame that crawled through him as alive as if he had never crossed into the realm of death.

He reached for the pen….

“Tally!” Breanne gasped and pulled her legs up on the bed.

“Chill, li’l sis. Looks like he’s going to answer your question.”

The old crone hissed. “Must you always play the melodramatic ass?”

“If you have a better suggestion, Madame…” Gabriel let his words trail off as he pressed the pen to the page to begin his missive, determined to write honestly and from the heart. He refused to spare himself the pain of reliving his wasted love affair, the shame of his own foolishness, the regret of his betrayal of the woman who had loved him.

It was the least he could do to atone, to attempt to set things right—not for himself, because he had earned his reward, but for those who partook in the dismal fate through no fault of their own. The thought speared him on the edge of a guilt so heavy not even death tempered the weight.

Madeleine. Their children. Generations of descendents following the path of ambition to be spared the heartache of love. Tallis. Breanne. Even this horrible old crone, for all her bitter choices, had only been reacting to
his
actions.

I
MPOSSIBLE WORDS APPEARED
on the pages as if an invisible hand wielded the pen. Tally chuckled softly, but Bree could only stare, the breath trapped in her throat, disbelieving yet unable to tear her gaze from the words that formed sentences, stringing together into a story.

Bree had eventually remembered to breathe, but when the pen finally came to a stop, came to rest beside her day planner, her gaze swam with tears.

Before she could even lift a hand to swipe at her eyes, to begin to pull her shell-shocked thoughts into some semblance of order, she felt the temperature dip sharply.

It felt as if a window had blown open and a winter wind swept in, a chill that sent goose bumps up her arms and built and shifted until it pierced her skin….

As if a ghost had kissed her cheek.

L
UCAS’S CELL PHONE
jangled a tune, and he grabbed it from the desk without taking his gaze from his laptop, flipped it to his ear and said, “Talk to me.”

“You owe me big,” Max shot back. “Josie’s been giving
me the silent treatment all day. Not to mention I’m going broke losing at baccarat.”

“Then stop losing and start winning.”

“There’s a plan.”

Lucas laughed. “Is she all right? Haven’t seen any sign of the degenerate, have you?”

“Bouquet of roses showed up tonight. Coral. Huge. Since she marched them straight to Silver-Tongue Sammie, I figured you didn’t send them.”

“You figured right.”

“Then there’s your answer.”

Lucas and Max were tag-teaming Bree. Lucas had kept her all to himself after she’d come off duty, which had proven to be no problem. Max showing up at Toujacques that night had been trickier.

Bree wasn’t buying that Max had started playing baccarat on his honeymoon and wanted to hone his skills. After a long night of watching him haunt the gaming tables, she’d finally called to ask if there was a problem with the newlyweds. Lucas told her they’d had a fight. Better that than letting her think Max was a gambling addict.

“How about you?” Max asked. “Come up with anything?”

“I did, in fact. Hit the jackpot around midnight.”

It had taken him the better part of the night, but he’d managed to track Robicheaux’s money trail to discover the man not only existed under three aliases but was involved with a sleazy Internet scammer named Harvey Brondell.

Lucas explained to Max how he’d tracked this guy through seventeen separate ventures. Robicheaux and Brondell had sold everything from dicey insurance policies to cut-rate cemetery plots. They’d exploited
historic artifacts from the Middle East and capitalized on the Pope’s death by setting up an online store that sold bootleg copies of the pontiff’s writings.

Each endeavor had yielded a small fortune.

It wasn’t much of a stretch to speculate that Robicheaux might want to capitalize on Tally’s treasure through his connection to Bree. Judging by the numbers he and Brondell were laundering through a variety of offshore accounts, a run with Captain Dampier could earn them another windfall.

Max gave a low whistle. “So what are you going to do? Pass off the information to the police?”

“I want to, but I keep thinking about what Josie said. If I take that step without Bree’s knowledge and she finds out—”

“She’ll be even more pissed at you than Josie is at me.”

“But you’re married already. There’s nothing keeping Bree from telling me to take a hike.”

“Tough luck. But I think I’ll tell Josie I’m helping you see the error of your ways. Might get me out of the doghouse.”

“Go for it.”

Lucas hated causing trouble between the couple, but he hated the thought of Bree being harassed even more.

“O
MIGOSH
, I’
M NOT
believing this dress.” Tally stepped back to survey Bree’s appearance with a shake of her head.

“I’m not believing we pulled it together.” Bree twirled around to see herself in the mirror.

One glimpse of the complete package made her glad she hadn’t begged a gown from Susanna and Olaf. She could hold her head high next to all the elaborate costumes the krewe had commissioned for its court.

Modeled after the French fashion of the time, Bree’s gown was a creation of lemon velvet and pastel silk that shone to perfection with the elaborate trim she and Tally had hastily tacked into place. With her hair upswept to showcase the glittering tiara, she looked a fitting courtier.

She whipped the skirt around, pleased it swished solidly. “Can’t even tell half the gown is only basted together.”

“We sewed all the important parts. Besides, no one will be looking inside.” Tally rolled her eyes. “Except Lucas maybe, and I don’t think he’s interested in your seams.”