Bayou Baby

by Lexi Blake

  Sera knew exactly what was going on. “Kenny White’s in town again. He moved back in with his momma because he lost that job packing boxes in Houma. He showed up last Wednesday with a camera. He said he was taking pictures of birds. Not our butts in leggings.”

  “Yeah, I got the whole Audubon Society argument,” Armie admitted. “I don’t buy it. He’s a pervert. Every town has a couple. I’m going to let Peanut attack and then I don’t even have to write up an incident report.”

  She didn’t think Peanut had enough energy to attack. He might lick the criminal to death, but he wasn’t a police dog. Shep had been a working dog. She often sat with him and wondered at all the things that dog had seen and done. And then she gave him an extra treat. Like his owner, Shep was a warrior who could also be so tender it made her ache inside. The big German shepherd was sweet with Luc, following him everywhere like it was his job to ensure no harm came to the baby.

  She’d brought Luc with her a couple of days when they were working on safe parts of the house. Luc was corralled in a playpen, and Shep made sure he stayed there. Every so often, they would take a break and go out to the yard and sit and have a snack in the sunshine. Luc would laugh and run around, Shep always behind him.

  They had felt like a family.

  She shook it off because it was far too soon to think that way. As far as Luc knew, Harry was just another kind male authority figure, like Remy and Zep. She was careful not to show too much affection for Harry around Luc.

  Celeste was another story entirely. Sera had decided never to even mention Luc’s name around Celeste. The less she knew about Luc, the better.

  Lila snorted as she moved into warrior pose. “Yeah, it will be Peanut who takes down our peeper. I told you, babe, I can handle Kenny. I think you should watch the Beaumont situation, though. I’ve always thought Celeste could blow. That woman’s wound up tight.”

  “I’m supposed to go shopping with her,” Sera explained. “I’m meeting her in New Orleans to find a dress for the wedding. Well, not really to find a dress. Celeste already picked out the dress. I have to go and try it on and let them tailor it for me. She’s concerned with my boobs.”

  “That’s where she’ll do it,” Hallie vowed. “She’ll hire an assassin to sneak into the dressing room and it will be death by Chanel. You know my momma says everyone gets killed in New Orleans.”

  Hallie’s mom believed big cities were the work of the devil, but then she felt the same about tank tops, push-up bras, artificial intelligence, and avocados.

  “Hallie Rayburn, do you have something you want to share with the class?” Joy LeGrande was one of the two yoga instructors who ran sessions across the parish. She stared at the back of her class, her dark eyes hawkish. “You do understand that this is supposed to be quiet, contemplative time, right?”

  Hallie’s eyes went wide and she looked a lot like she had when they’d gotten caught passing notes in English class. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  Hallie could be awfully deferential to anyone in a position of power.

  “We were talking about the fact that Celeste is probably planning on killing Seraphina.” Sylvie was not.

  Every head turned, all eyes on Sera.

  “They’re joking,” she said weakly. “We should definitely move on to some core work, right?”

  “It’s true. I thought it was another rumor,” Joy said, putting a hand on her nonexistent hip. The woman was fit. “You caught that gorgeous hunk of man. All right, you need to dish because he’s turned down every single woman in this town, and a whole lot of the married ones, too. Don’t you give me that judgmental look, Mary Lou. I saw you looking at him.”

  Yoga was completely put on hold in favor of intense questioning that Sera had not expected. Women who hadn’t given her the time of day in years were suddenly interested in what she was doing. How is the house going? Is Harry working on it with you? Have you been to Beaumont House? Does Celeste really have a movie theater in that place?

  Lila rolled up her mat and joined her husband on the bench, obviously unimpressed with the impromptu press conference, but Sera’s friends stayed at her side as she learned the only thing worse than being the town outcast was suddenly being its sweetheart.

  * * *

  ***

  “I want to know what you’re doing with Sera. I pretended everything was all right with Harry, but I know you’re up to something.” Cal hadn’t even knocked on the door to the office Celeste used while she was in New Orleans. It was across the hall from his office and much smaller. She’d always loved that other office, which was reserved for the CEO. Not for its horrible dated and masculine furnishings but for its view of the Mississippi River. The CEO’s domain had floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, and when she’d stood there waiting for her husband, she’d always felt like she was looking out over her kingdom.

  Well, she had until Ralph inevitably walked in and put her in her place.

  Lately, she’d started wondering what her place was.

  She sat back, studying her son. Cal looked different in a suit. She’d never really thought about it, merely accepted that a suit was what the CEO wore to work, but Cal didn’t wear them in his normal life. He dressed well, but much more casually. The suit seemed odd on her laid-back son, and yet he put it on every day according to the network of employees she had looking in on Cal when she couldn’t.

  “I’m not doing anything with her at all.” Except sending her a couple of dozen e-mails about the rules for how to behave. She’d found herself actively enjoying writing the snarky missives and waiting for Sera to reply with equal sarcasm. The young woman had a wit she often hid in deference to camouflage. If there was one thing she’d learned about Seraphina Guidry in the days since she’d made the decision to change up her tactics, it was that Sera preferred to go unnoticed now. Sera dimmed her glow in order to stay out of the spotlight.

  Celeste could understand that.

  “You invited her to the brunch next Saturday.” He said the words flatly, but they were an obvious accusation.

  “I thought you would be happy that I’m not going to fight your cousin on his choice of romantic partner. I remember a whole argument about what a terrible person I was and how downtrodden poor Seraphina is. You were right about that. The poor girl doesn’t even have the money to buy herself a nightie. She has to greet the day in an ill-fitting T-shirt with the words Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder on it.”

  Her son’s eyes narrowed. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

  “Well, Calvin, it’s been implied by several young people lately that I don’t understand anything at all, so you will have to be more specific.” She’d expected she would get an earful from her children. Harry was the only one who seemed happy with the invitation for Sera to join them at family events.

  Harry didn’t know her as well as Cal and Angie.

  “You invited Sera to brunch with Austin’s family. What are you planning to do to humiliate her?”

  Her heart clenched a bit at the accusation. She’d decided this was the best path because Harry would likely change his mind, or Sera would, and her getting in the way would only bond them further. She’d never purposefully humiliated anyone. She’d had more than enough of that from her mother-in-law. “I am not the one who put those rumors out about Seraphina. I am not the reason she can’t keep a job. I’ve never in my life told someone they shouldn’t go to Guidry’s for any reason other than the heartburn their gumbo gives the world.”

  “You didn’t tell your friends to stay away from the diner she worked at? Or the store? Or Marcelle’s?”

  He really didn’t think much of her. Her mother-in-law might have had a point about keeping the relationship with one’s children fairly emotionless. “No. I don’t talk to my friends about Sera.” She didn’t actually have friends. She had cronies. She had women and men around to
wn who did her bidding because they wanted to be associated with the Beaumont name. “I know everyone blames me because I said some things in my grief, but I said them inside this family.”

  “Everyone knows how you feel about her,” Cal pointed out.

  “I can’t help that.” She felt a bit weary about the whole thing. Seeing the way Harry had lit up when he realized she wasn’t going to give him hell about being with that little blonde . . . She had to stop thinking that word. From what she could tell, Sera wasn’t a tramp. She’d dated one young man in the years since Wes had died. Obviously she’d had an affair that went wrong and resulted in an unplanned pregnancy, but Celeste was getting far too old to judge someone for a mistake like that. Lately, she’d started thinking that judging anyone at all took far more energy than she was willing to expend. “I don’t know what’s going to happen between them, but I will not lose another family member because they see something in Sera Guidry that I don’t.”

  Cal stared at her for a moment. “I almost believe you.”

  “Do I hope this doesn’t go anywhere? Yes. I believe they are jumping into this relationship far too quickly, and I don’t want Harry to get attached to her child when we don’t even know who the father is or if he’s going to come into the picture at some point. But I’m not going to say a thing about it. It doesn’t work. Trying to control situations . . . All it’s done is cost me my children.”

  Cal was quiet for a moment. “You haven’t lost me. Or Angie.”

  “It felt like I had the other night.” Sitting and talking to her maid over some excellent roast and a bottle of wine had caused something to shift inside her. Annemarie reminded her of her mother. And her sister. They’d talked about Annemarie’s grandbabies.

  Oh, she’d missed her sister in those moments. If her sister had lived, she would have moved her into Beaumont House along with Harry.

  “Did you know when I first married your father, I asked him if your aunt could come and live in the guesthouse?”

  Cal’s shoulders relaxed, but his eyes had widened in surprise. “Are you talking about your sister?”

  “Yes, this was before Harry was born, but our parents had passed on and I helped her out because she was in college.” They’d lived in a tiny apartment and Janelle had gone to school while Celeste worked. “I couldn’t imagine her living alone, and let’s be honest, her degree was going to be social work, so she was going to starve. I thought she could transfer to a school close to here and live in the guesthouse and she could help with you.”

  “But obviously she didn’t come here, and I don’t think she finished college, right?”

  “She did not because your father thought if she couldn’t afford it herself, she shouldn’t have an education. He told me I could give her everything I had in my account, but after we were married, she was on her own.” She could still remember how trapped she’d felt. It had been that moment that she’d realized her happily ever after wasn’t going to be as promised.

  “That sounds like dear old dad.”

  “I had to choose between being a single mother and taking care of my sister, and I couldn’t do it.” Her heart still ached with that choice. “My sister didn’t even blink. She told me to follow my heart and not to worry about her.”

  “Mom, he was wrong to force you to choose.”

  “But the choice was mine.” She reached for a tissue. The tears that always seemed close now were an annoying side effect of all this self-reflection. “I didn’t follow my heart. I followed my fear. I don’t want to do that again. For four years Seraphina has been a face for all my troubles, and the idea that Harry could fall into the same trap as Wes frightens me.”

  “I don’t think she was trying to set a trap. I know you think she’s some kind of gold digger.”

  Celeste waved that off. “I don’t anymore. A gold digger tends to know how to dress and present herself. And I offered up you. You’re a much better catch since Harry doesn’t actually have any money of his own, and he has terrible taste in everything from cars to that beer he drinks.”

  Cal’s face lit up and he looked younger. This wasn’t his usual arrogant smirk. It was a beaming smile. “You offered me up?”

  It was good to know she could surprise him from time to time. “Absolutely, my darling boy. She turned you down flat and then drank some coffee from a fast-food place. And if that motel I found them in is any indication of her standards, well, I don’t have to worry about her looting the family coffers. Though I will have to direct her in how to dress for the wedding events.”

  “You’re really letting Harry bring her? This isn’t some wild plan to humiliate her and force them apart?”

  It was time to be honest. She was finding a crazy sort of freedom in being honest. So much of her life to this point had been about artifice and protecting the family name. But how could she come to a place of peace inside herself if she wasn’t ever honest about who she was? “I thought about it at first. I thought I’ll be the good guy in this situation and let it all blow apart. I’ll set her up to show her how she doesn’t belong.”

  “That sounds more like the mother I know.”

  It was a fair assessment, but he was forgetting about something. “But if Sera doesn’t belong because she wasn’t raised wealthy, then Harry doesn’t belong, either. Then everything your father and grandmother said about my sister was right.”

  Cal stared at her for a long moment. “You’re doing this for Harry.”

  “I think I might be doing this for me.” It had taken days to admit it. Or maybe it had been the sassy e-mails Sera had sent back. She’d been surprised that she hadn’t taken offense. Instead, she’d enjoyed sparring with the younger woman. “I’ve spent most of my adult life following a bunch of rules your grandmother laid down. I’ve started to wonder why I keep doing it even though she’s gone. Is this still her family?”

  Cal put his hands on her desk and his eyes had softened. “No, Mom. It’s yours now. You get to do what you want. But don’t forget that I have a life, too. So does Angie. The times have changed. So should the Beaumont family.”

  “But I’m still not letting Sera wear that hideous jumpsuit. And you’re going to have to hold her down so I can get her in a proper pair of shoes.” There would be no flats at the wedding. Some things would never change as long as she had breath in her body.

  “See, you are trying to scare her away,” Cal said, but there was a grin on his face.

  “Well, she’s not going to show up in flip-flops. Silly girl.”

  “You like her.”

  “I am amused by her. We’ll have to see if that amusement translates to charming dinner banter,” she allowed. “I’m supposed to meet her in an hour at Claudine’s. And don’t look at me that way. I called ahead and told them to expect my nephew’s girlfriend. I know how snobby those clerks can be. I asked Patrice to meet her.”

  “Thank you. I don’t think Harry understands what you’ve done for him,” Cal said solemnly. “But Angie and I do. We appreciate that you’re willing to keep an open mind. Speaking of open minds, I have a problem with the accounting this month and I’m not sure how to handle it.”

  “Well, we should fix that.” Celeste gestured to the door. “Let’s go to your office and we’ll have some coffee and you can explain it to me.”

  “I hate accounting,” Cal grumbled.

  Everyone hated accounting, but it had to be done. She followed her son out, perfectly happy with the way the morning had gone.

  chapter eleven

  Sera stood outside the posh store and wished she’d taken the time to change her clothes. She’d thrown a T-shirt over her leggings, but she feared her athleisure wear and sneakers would stand out among the New Orleans elite.

  She was really more comfortable in the Quarter, where no one cared what you wore. Or sometimes if you wore anything at all.

  She stare
d up at the imposing building that housed the luxury boutique known as the House of Hanover. She wasn’t sure where they got that name since the building obviously wasn’t a house, and there was a smaller plaque with the name Justine Reneaux, Designer.

  She glanced down at her watch. She was right on time, but she couldn’t see Celeste inside.

  Of course, that meant nothing. Celeste probably knew this Justine person and they were in the back somewhere sipping champagne and trying to find more material to cover Sera’s boobs since they might give the elderly aunt a heart attack.

  She pushed through the gilded doors and couldn’t help but gape a bit in wonder. This was an impeccably done space, styled to look like a grand Parisian apartment. She had to smile at the glamorous store. The colors were rich, baroque style. And the place smelled good, too. There were clothes along the walls, beautifully displayed near two grand staircases that rose up on either side of the room. There was a large lounge currently taken up by a man in a business suit. He looked to be in his late forties or early fifties. He was pacing and talking on a cell phone. A woman in a designer suit carried out a tray with champagne glasses and he took one.

  “May I help you?” The woman carrying the tray crossed the space between them.

  “I have an appointment with . . .” She couldn’t remember the name Celeste had sent her. She was pretty sure it started with a P. Had she deleted the e-mail? She’d written down the address, but the e-mail might still be on her phone. If she could find it at the bottom of her tote bag. Yeah, she wished she hadn’t dragged in her gym bag. The last thing she needed to do was dig through old socks, scrunchies, and her water bottle to find her phone. “Priscilla? Sorry, I can’t remember the exact name.”

  The woman who looked completely flawless frowned. She stood tall in front of the lounge as though she was its guardian, sent to ensure only the worthy got through. “We don’t have anyone here by that name.”