by Lexi Blake
“But she doesn’t know about Luc. I think she’s going to be far less tolerant of you once she realizes you never told her you had her precious baby boy’s child,” Remy reasoned. “He doesn’t know what Celeste was like back when Wes was alive.”
“I do,” a masculine voice said.
She sighed because she hadn’t meant for him to find out this way. She turned and Zep was standing in the doorway, already dressed for his shift in jeans, a Guidry’s T-shirt, and boots. Her younger brother would have done well if he’d gone out to Hollywood. He had the looks and he knew how to make an entrance. “I should talk to you, Zep. There’s something you should know.”
“That Wes is Luc’s biological father?” Zep asked, taking the seat next to hers. “I’ve known that since before he was born.”
“How would you know?” Remy asked. “She didn’t tell me for years. I thought only Mom knew.”
“I know because I know my sister,” Zep replied. “There’s no way Sera fools around with some married man, and if it had been anyone else, she would have demanded the man support his kid. Also, I remember what happened in the weeks before Wes lost his damn mind and joined the Army. No offense, brother.”
Remy waved that off. “Hey, I went into the Navy because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I would have been perfectly happy with running Beaumont Oil if I’d been that kid. I understand what it means to be expected to continue a family business.”
“I think the situations are pretty different. You always loved this place. You always wanted to run it, and you had a great relationship with Pop-Pop.” Zep looked over at her. “Wes had some serious issues with his dad. So did Angie and Cal. Cal still hates the old man and he’s been dead a couple of years, so I don’t see time changing his feelings. Anyway, I remember Wes tried to come back and see Sera, but she asked Mom to tell him she wasn’t there. So I knew something had happened. Then Wes up and left town like he couldn’t stand the thought of being here. I know I’m more famous for my good looks than my brains, but I can put two and two together.”
All these years he’d known and kept her secret. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I figured if you wanted to talk to me, you would,” Zep admitted. “If Wes had lived, he would have come home to an ass kicking, but he didn’t, and it was obvious you decided to raise Luc on your own. So I supported you. I don’t need to know everything to know I love you, sister. I don’t need to be in on the secret to help you keep it. And now I think I might have to fight Harry. Remy, I’m going to need some help. He’s way bigger than Wes was.”
She brushed away tears. She had her family. Luc had them, too. They could get through anything if they were together, and she needed to start trusting that. Her mom was crazy sometimes, but she would do anything for her kids. “I don’t want you to go after Harry. He’s just being Harry.”
“Can he be someone else for a little while?” Zep asked. “Someone with less training and muscle?”
Her brother always made her smile. “Don’t worry about Harry. It’s Celeste we need to prepare for. She’ll be the one who comes after me.”
“Are we sure about that?” Zep asked. “I’m not saying she won’t want to see Luc, but is it all that bad to have a rich-as-sin grandparent? Celeste isn’t Ralph. I know she’s been nasty to Sera from time to time, but she loved her kids.”
That was a big part of the problem. “Yes, I’m worried she’ll love Luc so much she’ll decide she can raise him better than me.”
Zep’s eyes flared. “You honestly believe she’ll come after you for custody?”
“I think it’s a possibility I should be prepared for. The truth of the matter is this is one hundred percent my fault and I need to deal with it. I should never have gotten involved with Harry knowing who his family is. I was crazy about him and I convinced myself it wouldn’t be a problem. No one’s ever connected Luc to Wes. Well, no one who mentioned it to me.” She was thankful her younger brother knew how to keep a secret. “I should have gone with my first instinct and stayed away from him altogether. I should have fixed up the house and sold it and moved.”
That had Zep sitting up in his chair. “Moved? Why are we even talking about you moving?”
Remy looked to their brother. “What did you expect her to do? I’ve always worried that the situation would come to this. Luc is growing up and he’s going to ask questions at some point. He’ll go to school and hear the rumors.”
“Kids can be mean.” She knew she couldn’t keep him from all pain, but she had a choice in this. “And we don’t know that he’ll continue to look like our side of the family. I think he already has Wes’s eyes. It was always a matter of time before I had to make this decision. It looks like my time is up.”
“You do not have to move,” Zep insisted. “I’m not going to allow freaking Celeste Beaumont to run my sister off.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Zep had even less money than she did since he spent it all on beer.
“I could seduce Celeste, make a tape of it, and then we blackmail her,” Zep announced triumphantly.
Remy’s eyes rolled. “You’re going to seduce Celeste Beaumont?”
Zep gave him a shrug. “Haven’t found a woman yet I couldn’t seduce. Maybe we should get Momma in on this. And Miss Marcelle. Those two always have a plan, and it’s never bad to have the mayor on our side. Can’t Sylvie make a law or something?”
Her brother hadn’t paid attention in government class, and bringing her mother into it would turn the whole thing into some sort of long con. She couldn’t hide behind them anymore. “The best thing I can do now is make sure I’m ready for when Harry tells his aunt.”
“Why does Harry have to tell her at all?” Remy asked. “Did you ask him not to?”
“Of course I did, and he said he wouldn’t, but I know him. He’s not going to be quiet forever. At some point he’ll decide it’s for the best and he’ll say something.” Had she kicked him out too quickly? Should she have talked to him longer? Tried to make him understand? “I’m hoping he holds off long enough for me to get Guidry Place finished and ready to sell.”
“I wanted you to keep it,” Zep said with obvious regret. “I really thought you would like running a B and B. Of course, I kind of thought Harry would be there with you.”
She had, too, and that had been the most foolish thing of all. “Well, I’ve got to grow up.”
“This didn’t happen because you’re not a grown-up,” Remy corrected. “You love him, don’t you? We can’t help who we love.”
“And he can’t help who his family is, which is why I should have stayed away.” She stood up. “If you don’t mind setting up a call with Lisa’s brother-in-law, I would appreciate it. I know this probably isn’t his area of expertise, but he might be able to give me some pointers. And tell me how much it’s going to cost.”
“Don’t worry about that.” Remy stood and she was enveloped in a bear hug. “We’ll make it work. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, and that includes selling the house. I know you’re panicked right now and it feels like you don’t have choices, but you do.”
“I could choose to kill Harry.” Zep was still frowning. “I feel responsible because I talked to him about asking you out. I might have been pulling some strings like the ruthless manipulator I am.”
She rubbed a hand over her younger brother’s shoulder. “I always knew your plots would get me in trouble.”
A forlorn expression crossed her brother’s face. “I thought he would be good for you.”
The sad part was he had been. Harry had been good to her, good for her. He would have been good to Luc, but she couldn’t expect him to choose her over his family. She wouldn’t even want him to. Remy was going on about how they couldn’t kill Harry, and Zep argued that he could take them all out if it meant protecting their sister.
At least she wouldn’t lose them. Her family would have to be enough. Now she had to see Harry one last time and let Celeste know she’d been right all along. She didn’t belong anywhere near the Beaumont clan.
* * *
***
Harry stared at the gazebo. It was almost done and it looked perfectly lovely, ready for the wedding reception. Picture perfect, but then looks could be deceiving. He’d figured that out.
After all, he’d firmly believed he and Sera would make a perfect couple, and it turned out he was very wrong.
She hadn’t been available when he’d gone to pick up Shep. He’d gone to her house ready to sit down and have a long talk about what had happened. He’d spent the entire night working in the shop because he couldn’t sleep. He’d done what he always did when he was restless—he’d worked and let the problem run through his head. But instead of getting to talk to Sera, he’d been left with Delphine, who’d had a whole lot of questions about why he hadn’t stayed the night. Sera hadn’t told her anything, merely left saying she needed to talk to Remy and had to get to the restaurant before the rush.
He’d gotten to see Luc, who’d been toddling around behind Delphine. The little boy had hugged Shep before letting the dog go. Luc had asked him if he was staying and if he wanted to play, and it had taken everything he had to tell the kid he had to go.
What the hell was he going to do if Sera wouldn’t even talk to him? How had things gone so wrong?
“You finished.” His cousin walked out, a smile on her face. “I can’t believe how good it looks. I’ve seen it in old pictures, but this is amazing. It’s everything you promised. You do good work, Harry.”
Yes, he could put this old gazebo back together again, but a relationship was a different thing. He couldn’t patch up what had happened with Sera unless he agreed never to tell his aunt her secret. He wasn’t sure he could do that. And now that he was done, he had no idea how he would pass the time. He could sneak over to Sera’s at night and be her construction elf. “I’m glad you think so.”
Angie ran her manicured fingers over the smoothed and finished wood. “You also work fast. I was a little worried when I found out Sera put you to work on Guidry Place. I thought you might neglect this job in favor of hers. Not that I would blame you. When I first met Austin, I neglected a lot of things. Luckily my fiancé is an excellent tutor or I wouldn’t have graduated, and then I doubt my mom would have offered me a job at Beaumont Oil.”
That was a surprise. He hadn’t heard anything about Angie working with the company. “I thought you were going to take some time before figuring out what you want to do.”
She shrugged, walking up the steps and glancing out the back, which looked over the rose garden. “That’s just a way of saying I got a fancy degree and now I’m going to get pregnant and never use it again. Austin and I talked about it and we want to put off starting a family for a while. I want to work. I want to learn.”
He could still hear Sera telling him the same thing. She wanted to learn. She wanted to be the one to handle code enforcement. She wanted to be a good partner.
Was he making the wrong decision? Had he handled her all wrong? At the time, it had seemed clear-cut, but he’d spent the whole night thinking about Sera’s position and why she would have done what she did. It was more complicated than he’d made it in that moment.
And he’d been blindingly jealous of his cousin. His dead cousin. He couldn’t pretend. He’d thought about the fact that Wes had been the one to give her Luc. He’d then turned around and been volcanically angry because it was apparent that Wes had taken advantage of her.
He’d been overly emotional, and it might have cost him the woman he loved.
“I think that’s great,” he replied, putting his tools up. He closed the box and started back to the shop. He needed some more time alone, needed to think about how he could convince Sera to give him a second chance. “Though you should know Cal hates it there.”
“Cal only hates it because he hates managing people. He likes marketing and design.” Angie strode beside him, not at all picking up his hints that he wasn’t in the mood for company. “He’s not the right person to be CEO, but Mom can’t see it.”
He stopped because this was the most open he’d heard Angie be about everything that was going on at Beaumont Oil. “You think you are?”
“One day I will be. Not now. I don’t have any experience because I didn’t work there the way Cal and Wes did during the summers. My father thought I should be learning more feminine things like how to dance ridiculous old dances that haven’t been popular in years. I can fox-trot with the best of them. No, I’m not the person who can keep things running. My mother is. She should take the CEO position. She’s got the votes for it. Right after my father died, she bought back some of the stock he’d sold off. We have a fifty-two percent stake in the company because Mom said you should never cut it too close.”
He hadn’t known his aunt had made a move like that. “I thought the family always owned the majority share.”
“Dad sold some stock off to cover a couple of bad investments he’d made,” Angie admitted. “It wasn’t much. Four percent, but it took us under the majority vote threshold, and my mother doesn’t like to take chances. That’s one of the reasons I think the company would be safe in her hands. I’m hoping she’ll finally see that I’m the one who should eventually take over. Cal will be far happier if he can have some freedom. He’s actually quite a good artist, but he wasn’t allowed to study it. The only reason Dad let him major in marketing was he’d decided Wes was his real heir.”
“Well, I hope you get what you want.” He stood outside the door of the shop. Now that he was done with the gazebo, he would have absolutely nothing to do if he wasn’t working with Sera. He had to find a way to make her understand it was okay to tell his family about Luc.
Or he had to take the chance that she would never want to tell and live with it.
One way or another, he couldn’t let her go. Not without a fight. He was in love with her.
Angie started to turn but faced him again. “I know that you think you want Sera, but I hope you’ve given some consideration to what we talked about the other day.”
When she’d tried to warn him off. “I assure you, I’ve thought about very little except Sera. I was up most of the night thinking about whether or not we can work it out. We had an argument. You might get your wish.”
“It wasn’t my wish.” Angie’s shoe tapped on the concrete drive. “What did you fight about?”
He couldn’t tell her. He’d promised Sera and he meant to keep that promise. This wasn’t his secret to tell. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve got to find a way to make it up to her.”
He didn’t even really understand what he was making up, and that was the problem. He hadn’t listened enough the night before. He should have been patient and listened to her.
“Or you can understand that there are some things that aren’t meant to be. I know it seems like Mom is coming around on Sera, but at some point we’ll all find out this has been a major manipulation,” Angie said with a sigh. “I love her, but she’s never going to accept someone like Sera in our family. She would have done anything for Wes. Anything but accept Sera. He tried to date her for years.”
“She wasn’t interested in him that way.” Now that he was thinking about it from her perspective, of course she’d been scared. He still wasn’t sure it was right never to let Luc know a part of his family, but he could see how she’d been in a corner and hadn’t known how to get out.
“She had to have been at least once,” Angie said under her breath.
He stopped because that had been said with a fine edge of distaste. “What did you say?”
She shook her head. “Nothing. I’m sad you got hurt. It’s exactly what I was trying to avoid. It’s why I talked to you about it when I realized you were ge
tting serious.”
But that wasn’t what she’d said. Her arguments against his relationship with Sera hadn’t been about him getting his heart broken. No. They’d been about Luc. And that vaguely disgusted comment about Sera and Wes had been about Luc, too. He felt his eyes narrow. “You know.”
“Know? Know what? I’m afraid I didn’t know you’d broken up. It hasn’t made the rounds yet, but it will. Everything does around here.”
“No. Not everything. Some of you are good at keeping secrets.” He should have known there was something more behind Angie’s reaction.
Angie’s face flushed and she turned, moving toward the house. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He dropped his tool kit and followed her. “I think you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
She moved into the house, opening the kitchen door. “Let it go, Harry.”
He couldn’t. This secret was costing him the best relationship he’d ever had, and he wanted to know why it wasn’t as secret as Sera seemed to think it was. If Angela knew, perhaps his aunt knew as well and didn’t care. Sera had told him Celeste looked down on her. What if they all knew and he’d blown up his relationship for no reason? What if Sera had been scared for nothing?
“I’m not going to let it go,” he said, pushing through the door despite the fact that Angie had let it close. “You know about Luc. It’s the only reason you would have spent all that time trying to convince me to stay away from the kid. Why else would you care? You know who Luc’s father is.”
Angie gasped and her whole body went stiff as Celeste walked in from the dining room.
“Why would Angie know about Seraphina’s child’s father?” Aunt Celeste set her purse on the kitchen table and took them both in. “They’re not close. And I assure you if my daughter knew some gossip, she would tell. Despite the angelic looks, she’s not perfect.”
“I thought you were going into the office,” Angie said, a flush staining her cheeks.