Luke (23 page)

He tipped his head in agreement. “She rounded a curve and met a church van. I thought she meant to hit it head-on. At the last second, she swerved. We went off the road, rolled over. I was thrown clear since I was looking for a chance to take the wheel and hadn't fastened my seat belt. Mary Ellen was still inside when the car hit a tree and exploded in flames. I got to her, could touch her hand, but
she was trapped with her legs pinned in the wreckage. I couldn't get her out, though I tried. God, how I tried. But the fire was so hot, and she was screaming. Sometimes, I still hear—”

“Don't!” April said sharply. “Just—don't. Try not to think about it any more.”

“No,” he said, and repressed a shudder as he exhaled in slow release from the old nightmare.

April was quiet a moment, then she said abruptly, “All this time, I thought you were driving that night. You never spoke up to correct that impression, at least not that I heard.”

“You weren't interested in anything I had to say. If you assumed the worst, what did I care what anyone else thought? And why should they believe me if you, who knew me best, was so sure I had as good as killed Mary Ellen? There was also no way to talk about it without bringing Frank into it along with all the ugly things I suspected. I was your typical inarticulate half-grown redneck boy who barely knew what incest was, much less how to describe that kind of relationship.”

“So, you let yourself be blamed.”

“Why not? I had this stupid, quixotic idea that I should have been able to save her. Added to that was a feeling that I would be maligning someone who could no longer defend herself. Enough had been done to Mary Ellen.”

April was quiet for long moments then she shook her head. “Honorable, after all,” she said quietly. “I'm sorry. I should never have said what I did at dinner that night in New Orleans.”

He tried for a careless shrug, though it felt as if
a tight rope around his chest had been loosened. “Don't worry about it. Nothing I've done since has exactly polished the image. Anyway, I was confused and a little shell-shocked back then, in the day or so after the wreck, not thinking heroically or even very straight. By the time I realized the damage caused by keeping quiet, it was too late to correct it. I'd have sounded as if I were making excuses or lying to avoid the blame. So I just—let it go.”

A considering quiet fell. Then April inhaled and let it out in a soundless sigh. Voice compressed, she asked, “So, you really think Mary Ellen died because of Frank?”

“As I said, she never put it in so many words. It may have been nothing more than a case of an overbearing brother with fundamentalist ideas about a woman's place. But something was there, something was driving her.”

“It might explain the weird phone calls if Frank had some kind of sexual hang-up,” she suggested.

“The thought had occurred to me.”

“But I really don't see why he should target me now, after all these years.”

He was ready for that one. “My theory, for what it's worth, goes something like this. Frank may have seen us together at Chemin-a-Haut for the Memorial Day party back earlier in the summer, and could have heard that Regina was playing matchmaker by making you maid of honor at her wedding.”

“She was?”

“You didn't notice? Where was your head? She and Kane are so damned happy they want everybody in on the act.”

“All right, but I still don't get the connection.”

“Frank knew you were important to me and always had been. Maybe it looked like we were getting involved again now that you're back in town.”

“In other words, he wanted to deprive you of any possible association with me as he was deprived of his sister. Even if there had to be a permanent removal.”

“Something like that.”

She stared into her juice a moment. When she looked up, her gaze was clear. “Very plausible, a neat theory, in fact. It certainly gets you off the hook.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” He tried to control the surge of anger he felt for her apparent doubt. In spite of everything.

“It doesn't address the fact that you don't want me writing about your family.”

“Lord, April, I don't care what you write. It's Granny May who doesn't want you poking around in our history and stirring up a stink.”

“I don't stir up stinks!”

She looked, he thought briefly, as exasperated as he felt. Why the devil was it that they could never be together more than five minutes without some argument flaring up between them? He raked a hand through his hair before he said, “Surely you don't suspect my grandmother of making obscene phone calls?”

“No, but someone could have done it for her.”

“Me, you mean.”

“The one to the radio show was made from a cell phone. You were in your truck at the time.”

“Come on, April. You'd recognize my voice.”

“Would I? In that situation?”

He flung up his hands. “Right. Thanks a lot, but I hope I have more imagination than that creep.”

She turned tomato red. He'd have given a lot to know which memory of the past few days and nights might have set off that reaction.

She said finally, “I had about decided you did, also you weren't such of a pervert.”

“I'm glad to hear it.” He was, too, and intensely glad that she could admit to that much. Her vacillating might be a self-protective instinct. He hoped so, since it might be a sign of how much the truth mattered to her.

“Which?”

“Both,” he answered without missing a beat.

“Though it would help my feelings if you'd also admit I might feel a tad remorseful about trying to blow Cousin Betsy to kingdom come.”

“Maybe a little,” she allowed. “After all, she's family.”

It was time for a change of subject, before he said too much. He let a few seconds pass then said, “Speaking of the clan, what about this book of yours? For instance, what if you discovered some juicy scandal involving the Benedicts? Can you honestly say you wouldn't be tempted to use it?”

“Being tempted is one thing, but writing a story that might hurt someone is something else entirely,” she protested. “I would never use anything that wasn't common knowledge, never construct an episode in such a way that anyone was held up to ridicule.”

“No?”

“No! Publishers frown on libel suits, you know. More than that, it would make me too uncomfortable to know I'd harmed someone, especially a nice old lady like Granny May. I mean, she showed me how to find four-leaf clovers and make clover bloom chains. She used to make gingerbread men for us, for Pete's sake!”

Luke could feel the amused twist of his lips and didn't even try to stop it. In quiet approval, he said, “So she did.”

“We had our differences. I think she felt we were too young to be so serious, but that's all in the past. Why would she think I'd try to hurt her now?”

“The girl I knew wouldn't have,” he said with care. “The woman I know now might, for all I can tell. As you said yourself, you're not the same—we're not the same.”

She looked away. “I haven't changed that much.”

What did that mean, he wondered? That she still felt the same as she had back then? That everything between them was, or could be, as it had been before? He'd like to think so, but was afraid to risk it. At the same time, he thought the fact that they were still talking, and even able to joke a little, must mean that she believed at least a portion of what he'd told her. Trying to stick to the subject, he asked, “What are you writing about the Benedicts, then? What's all the secrecy?”

“There isn't any. I just don't like talking about a story in progress because it takes away some of the excitement. If I reveal too much, I may lose interest in putting it on paper.”

“I guess that makes sense,” he allowed, “but it would help if I could give Granny May some idea of what you have in mind.”

April drank the rest of her pineapple juice. Instead of answering then, she gave him a glance from under her lashes. “You mentioned a juicy scandal. Is there one to be discovered?”

“Anything's possible. Lord knows, the closets at Chemin-a-Haut have their share of skeletons.” He wanted to be honest, since he thought the question was in the nature of a test, to see if he'd level with her since he was asking her to level with him.

“But…?” she suggested.

“But keeping to ourselves is too much of a family tradition to permit straying far, so the kind of thing Granny May has in mind seems unlikely.”

“And that would be?” April tilted her head inquiringly.

Here it came. With a deep breath, he said, “A little friendly miscegenation?”

She looked amused. “Really, Luke, your family tree is a matter of public record. Half a dozen cousins have compiled genealogical records and left copies on file at the Tunica Parish Library. It's all there, documented back to the Doomsday Book in England and far into the Celtic mists of Scotland. The only deviation I found was the Native American branch represented by your great-great-great-great-grandmother. And that's my story.”

“You're only using Granny Adochia?”

“I promise. It's enough, don't you think? Most people think of New Orleans and the French and Spanish colonial settlement when they think of Louisiana history. Few seem to realize that settlement
of the north central part of the state took place less than 150 years ago and parallels the opening of the west—the same patterns of immigration, same kinds of people, and much the same Indian problems and frontier mentality.”

“And that's it?”

A rueful smile came and went across her face, possibly for his dismissal of her history lesson.

“Isn't that enough, this powerful attraction between your handsome ancestor and his Indian maiden, excuse me, Native American maiden?”

“I'm not sensitive about it,” he said obligingly.

“A good thing, too. But where was I?”

“Talking about my handsome ancestor, the one I look so amazingly like it's hard to tell us apart.”

She gave him a quelling look. “Anyway, I'm intrigued by what would make a woman of such a different culture leave her people, accept a new religion and a new baptismal name, and follow a strange man into the wilderness to make a home.”

“Other than love?” he suggested.

“Other than love.” The agreement was without inflection.

“Trust. Caring. The need to be with him? It's happened untold times over the centuries.”

“Agreed,” she said with a nod, “which says a great deal about the courage of women.”

“In the case of my ancestress, I prefer to think it says more about what a great guy my grandpa must have been.”

“And you take after him in personality as well as looks, I suppose.”

“How'd you ever guess?” The look he gave her was as sultry as it was teasing.

Color rose to her hairline, but this time she didn't look away. The time was fast approaching, he suspected, when she might well call him on his smart remarks. She might even admit that she had put him in her books. What would he do then?

He'd decide later. For now, a diversion would come in handy. “As long as we're talking family suspicions, what about Tinsley?”

“Martin? What about him?”

“I know you said once that he was too slick and certain of his charm to resort to scare tactics, but he's not exactly a disinterested party here. In fact, in a contest against Frank for villain of the year, he'd get my vote.”

“You accused me of jealousy just now, didn't you? I'd say that almost sounded like the same thing.”

“That's only because it is,” he explained with a great show of magnanimity. “The guy took you away from Turn-Coupe for years, had much more of your time to himself than he ever deserved. If he's terrorizing you now in the hope of making you fly back into his arms, it will be my personal pleasure to kick the smarmy son of a—to kick the creep from hell to breakfast.”

“A consummation devoutly to be wished,” she said with dry emphasis.

He lifted a brow. “You really feel that way?”

“I do,” she answered. “But I still don't think he's capable of the dedication to pull it off.”

“No?”

“Not even to my money,” she said with a sigh.

“I'm not so sure about that. He seemed pretty interested in New Orleans.”

“Yes, you were there.” She gave him a look under her brows.

“Meaning?”

“Dog in a manger.”

“I never did get that parable,” he complained. “The dog might not have wanted to eat the hay, but why should he give up his nice warm bed?”

“Luke!”

He tried to look virtuous. “What did I say?”

She threw the ice cubes at him. Catching a couple of them, he weighed them in his hand while he gave her a considering look centered primarily on the scooped neck of her tank top. Then he set his glass on the deck, reached for her hand holding her glass and disposed of it as well.

“Luke, wait,” she said, moistening her lips as she flashed a glance from his face to the ice cubes in his hand, then back again.

“Oh, I don't think so,” he drawled. “There was something just now about consummations to be wished, I believe? I happen to have one in mind.”

“You wouldn't.” She paused. “Would you?”

She tried to pull away from him, but it was a halfhearted effort that he conquered without half trying. “I think maybe I would, pervert that I am.”

“I didn't mean it. I told you I didn't think that!”

“But I think you do,” he said as he transferred his hand to her waist in a quick movement and drew her across his lap, at the same time slipping his hand with the ice cubes under the hem of her top.

She caught her breath as the ice touched her, and a rash of goose bumps rippled under his fingers. They had little to do with being cold, however, or so he hoped.