Her words cut through him, sharp and terrifying even while they buoyed him up. All his fears, all his walking away, and still she loved him.
“This is it,” Anne said, looking at a raised stone grave. “See?” She nodded to the plaque with Mirabelle’s name engraved. She hadn’t been put into a family tomb, as most of the people in the cemetery, and they couldn’t find anyplace to leave the amulet.
“Maybe we open the grave?”
She frowned. “Ick, but maybe.” She looked up at him and he couldn’t help but smile at her. Yeah, maybe they needed to open the sarcophagus, but he had something to say first. “Anne,” he said. “I love you, too.”
He watched her smile bloom wide, and felt his heart lift.
“Then forget the damn curse,” she said. She grabbed him by the belt loops and pulled him against the stone tombs next to Mirabelle’s grave. He buried his fingers in her hair and pulled her mouth to his, wanting to tell her that nothing in the world would make him forget it. The question was, could he live with it.
He didn’t get the chance to speak, though, because suddenly they were tumbling backwards, falling into the crumbling remains of the tomb against which they’d been leaning. “Shit!” He leaped to his feet, then started pulling rubble off of Anne. “Dammit, don’t you dare be hurt. Anne! Anne!”
“I’m okay.” Her voice was soft, but strong, and limb by limb, she wiggled her body. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
He sat back on his heels, his heart pounding, and Libby’s words running through his head. Life happens.
Yeah, he thought, it did.
And so did curses. Hell, he knew that better than anyone.
The question was, if he was going to be cursed, did he want to be doomed with or without the woman he loved?
The answer was the same as it always had been: he wanted to be with Anne.
But today…
Well, today, maybe he’d finally realized that Anne understood what being with him meant, and it was her decision, too.
He took a deep breath, savoring the moment, then held out his hand. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said. “Let’s go home.”
“Home?” She blinked. “What about the curse? The sarcophagus?”
He glanced sideways at it. “I guess we’ll learn to live with it.”
She clutched his hand and climbed to her feet. “What? Reg?”
“You’re right. Hell, Libby was right.”
Her eyes widened, and she hooked her arms around his neck, then pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “Reg Franklin, I love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said, meaning it more than he could ever express.
“Do you mean it? About the curse not mattering to you anymore?”
“I mean it.”
She nodded, her expression pensive.
“Anne? What is it?”
“I’m not sure now if I should even say, but I think I’ve figured it out.” She brushed her palm against his cheek. “I know where to take the amulet.”
THEY HAD TO CALL LIBBY to be sure, but then they headed straight from the cemetery to St. Theresa’s Church on Poydras. The small church that had received funding from Mirabelle’s family. Funding and statuary.
“The angels,” Anne had said. “The inscription talked about returning it to the soul of the angel, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, if Mirabelle wrote the inscription, how could she be certain of how she’d be buried?”
He’d seen where she was going with that. “But if she already had a certain angel to which the amulet belonged…”
“Something on which she’d worked her magic,” Anne had finished.
“Sounds whoo woo,” he’d said with a grin.
“Very,” she’d agreed. “But if we’re lucky, that statue would have been donated to St. Theresa’s along with the money.”
And now, as they stood in the courtyard, he had to agree. It was filled with angel statues, some standing serenely, some with swords or trumpets. Some with wings spread. Some even appearing to fly.
“Hopefully, it’s one of these.”
One stood in the center of the courtyard on a pedestal surrounded by roses. “Look,” Reg said, pointing to the statue. He heard Anne’s intake of breath, and knew that she’d seen the same thing he did: an indentation within the stone breast of the statue just big enough to hold the amulet.
He met her eyes, and she nodded. Slowly, reverently, he moved toward the statue, then placed the amulet back into the breast of the angel.
There were no fireworks, no flares, no marching band.
But it was over.
He stepped back and found Anne beside him. Without a word, he pulled her close, sliding his mouth over hers. She opened for him, a soft moan escaping as she curled her arms around him. He slid his hands over her back possessively, wanting her desperately, and knowing he had her. She was his now, truly. Everything about her told him so, the way she pressed against him, the way she kissed him, the way her heart beat hard against his chest.
“Anne,” he murmured. “Dear God, I love you.”
She stroked his cheek, her smile gentle. “Can you tell if it’s over?” she asked. “Did the earth move?”
He laughed, then kissed her again, hard. “It just did, sweetheart. It just did.”
Epilogue
IT WAS THE FIRST TIME in too many years that Reg had not dreaded the coming of April 1. He was looking forward to it with anticipation, excitement. Triumph.
Finally, he’d beaten the curse.
The alarm in his watch beeped, signaling midnight. The start of a new era, the start of the rest of their lives. They were so lucky. Really.
From outside the bedroom window of the Dawes ancestral home, the gas lamps of New Orleans glowed warm and familiar. Inside, candles flickered, shadows dancing on the high ceilings and the velvet-covered walls. Reg looked over at his wife with loving eyes, knowing he’d found something better, as well.
Anne.
The bedroom was cluttered with boxes still waiting to be unpacked, but there had been other things, more important things to take care of when they arrived yesterday. Namely, making love to his wife. A man had to have his priorities.
Her lashes fluttered open, and he felt the familiar tightening in his heart. One year they’d been together as a couple, and the reaction never changed. She smiled and reached out a hand to stroke his cheek, and Reg felt another tightening. Lower, but no less important, and once again, Reg reordered his priorities.
Before he could react as biology dictated he should, his phone vibrated, and he read the text message. Frowned.
“What’s wrong?” Anne asked.
“Nothing,” he reassured her, still sounding confident because this wasn’t a big deal. An annoyance, a mere neurological gnat.
The phone vibrated again. Another incoming message, this one from Darcy.
Impossible. Anne looked at him, worry in her face. “Is everything all right?”
“Everything’s fine,” he said with a laugh, a little less confident. A sinking pit low in his stomach replaced the very nice and completely ignorant bliss that had been there earlier.
The phone vibrated again, and as Reg read Devon’s words, the full impact sunk in. They hadn’t broken the curse.
Oops.
“I might have miscalculated,” he began.
“You don’t miscalculate,” she cut in, still defending him. Still completely sure of him.
“This time, I might have,” he stated, to keep the record straight.
“How so?”
“I should have made sure. I should have tested this out. But I didn’t. It’s not over. And now you’re stuck.”
She arched a graceful, yet militant brow. “Stuck?”
Not surprisingly, she didn’t look unhappy, nor comfortable nor, as he’d so cleverly put it, “stuck.” But Anne had never been the one with doubts. That’d been Reg. “Not stuck. If you want to leave, I’ll understand.”
That wa
s a complete lie, but Reg chose not to muddy the waters with pesky things such as emotion and panic and the complete destruction of all happiness as he’d come to know it.
“What if I don’t want to leave? What if I’m happy right where I am?”
And once again, his lungs began to function as before. “Certainly that’s what you’ve always told me. But things aren’t quite as easy as before. You had expectations of calm. Of goodness.”
“Reg,” she started, in a bossy voice that got him hard all over again.
“What?”
Her hands twined around his neck, into his hair, tangling there as if she meant to keep him. “I loved you before the calm, before the goodness. It doesn’t matter to me. I love you.”
“I know that,” he insisted.
“For better, for worse,” she insisted, right back at him. Stubborn as always, which was one of the main reasons he loved her.
“Jenna’s having her baby in a cab somewhere on the George Washington Bridge,” he said, trying to make her understand what “worse” actually entailed.
“She’s a doctor. I’m sure she’ll know what to do.”
“Devon’s house got destroyed once again.”
“That’s why she works for an insurance company.”
“And Darcy’s stranded on Cape Cod with Evan.”
“And I’m sure she’s happy as a clam because of it.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“I’ve got you. Nothing’s going to bother me.”
And finally, his heart began to ease. Not that he’d doubted her at all.
Reg leaned down, and as his mouth covered hers, a cold breeze blew through the house, overturning the candle and setting the chenille blanket on fire.
Calmly, Anne beat out the flame, one-handed, not even pausing in mid-kiss.
Cursed? Not a chance, Reg scoffed. Not a chance.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5188-9
JUST FOOLING AROUND
Copyright © 2010 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
CAM’S CATASTROPHE
Copyright © 2010 by Kathleen Panov
DARCY’S DARK DAY
Copyright © 2010 by Julia Beck Kenner
DEVON’S DILEMMA
Copyright © 2010 by Kathleen Panov
REG’S RESCUE
Copyright © 2010 by Julia Beck Kenner
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
To Brenda, for a decade…and more to come!
Prologue April 1, 1980 T HE WORLD HAD NEVER SEEN four such dejected children. It was
1 April 1, five years earlier, 9:30 p.m. “I DON’T CARE what the bone-headed insurance
2 March 31: 364 days later I T WAS ABOUT TIME . Cam watched as the steel girders were
3 T AKING ADVANTAGE OF her momentary adrenaline rush, Jenna stripped her dress over her
4 C AM ROSE UP on his elbows and decided that he’d never seen anything so heart-stopping
5 April 1, 4:00 a.m. A FTER HE THREW ON A pair of jeans, Cam dug around his bedroom,
6 April 2, 12:37 a.m. C AM WOKE SLOWLY , scanning the disaster site that had been his
1 April Fools’ Day, three years ago Train arrives Union Station 8:15. Will bring bag
2 “Y OUR PURSE WAS STOLEN ,” Cam said. He spoke the words as if they constituted mathema
3 T IME STOPPED AS E VAN’S heart pounded in his chest. Not from fear—he’d been terrified
4 “H E’S GORGEOUS ,” B ELLA said, holding a tissue over her face. “I can’t believe you
5 “W E BROKE YOUR BED ,” Darcy said, looking completely mortified as she sat up from whe
1 April 1, two years earlier T HE EAR-SPLITTING NOISE of the alarm clock was sadist
2 “O WWWW !” That wasn’t a good sign. Devon cracked the door open again. “Did I hurt
3 C HANCE WAITED . By now, the tequila had worn off, and he was stuck with an extra weig
4 O NCE SHE WAS SAFELY IN HER BEDROOM , Devon collapsed on the four-poster, and exhaled
5 C HANCE TANGLED one hand through the heavy fall of her hair, wondering what fool had i
6 T HERE WAS THUNDER and some sort of shattering explosion, but Devon didn’t care. All s
7 D EVON AWOKE to the unfamiliar sensation of a brawny arm thrown casually across her br
1 April Fools’ Day, one year ago “F OLKS, THIS IS C APTAIN Edwards. We’ve been dodg
2 A NNE D AWES CLUTCHED the display counter so hard she was certain the glass would shat
3 R EG STARED AT THE WOMAN behind the counter. “Could you repeat that?” “I said we don’
4 R EG HELD HIS BREATH , knowing that he was being bold, acting only on his own desires
5 R EG WORKED HARD NOT TO LET his excitement show on his face, but he was pretty sure he
Epilogue I T WAS THE FIRST TIME in too many years that Reg had not dreaded the coming of
Just Fooling Around: Darcy's Dark Day/Reg's RescueCam's Catastrophe/Devon's Dilemma Page 16