Her mother made her awkward way to the kitchen for the kettle, spilling as much tea as made it into the cup as she poured, then returned to hand the cup to Bryn.
“Thanks, Mom.” Bryn held the china cup in her chilled fingers.
“That’ll warm you right up.” Patsy sat back down.
The tea was cold, but Bryn didn’t point that out. It was just one of a hundred little things that her mother no longer noticed.
Emmie bustled in from the back wearing one of her standard brightly colored outfits. Her dark face dimpled with the ever-present cheerful smile that hid what Bryn knew to be a stubborn efficiency that made a world of difference when it came to tending the often-difficult Patsy Louvel. Patsy had occasional fits where she’d fire Emmie and tell her to pack her bags. Bryn would smooth things over and remind her mother how lucky they were to have Emmie. Bryn couldn’t manage without the live-in nurse, even if she could ill afford the expense.
“I thought I heard someone come in.” Emmie’s shrewd black eyes honed in on Bryn’s cup and she frowned. “Let me boil some fresh water in the pot,” she said, heading for Bryn’s cold tea.
“I’m okay. It’s fine.” She forced a smile. “I just need to talk to my mother for a few minutes.”
“Well, then, I was catching up on some ironing,” Emmie said. “Let me know if you need me.” She gave another smile and bustled back out, leaving the faint scent of starch behind her.
Rain came down in a relentless pattering. The room lay in an ethereal calm with its shifting shades of blue, from the needle-pointed pillows to the delicate toile walls. An ornately framed mirror reflected the gray of the day outside. Bryn took a deep breath, let it out.
“We have a guest at Bellefleur, Mom.” How much her mother was going to grasp of what she was about to tell her, she didn’t know. But she had to know if her mother remembered anything that might provide a clue to the truth of Aimee’s murder.
“I hope Clint and Rianna are going to work it out this time,” Patsy said. “It’s just not fair the way they torture them. First he was kidnapped, then Rianna thought he was dead. And now he’s back and they still won’t let them get together.”
It took a few seconds to compute that her mother was talking about the characters on the soap.
“Mom—”
“Did you see what happened?” Patsy interrupted. “She thought he was killed in that nightclub fire, but he wasn’t. He’s been in a private hospital all this time. He had plastic surgery, and now he’s back. Only Rianna’s married to Brandon.”
Apparently, today, Patsy was living in soap-opera land.
“Mom. We need to talk.”
Patsy turned her blank eyes on Bryn. “Of course, darling. I thought we were talking.”
Her mother looked so damn beautiful and healthy on the outside. But Bryn knew that was only a surface mirage, and what she had to explain now was going to be upsetting if her mother actually understood it. The ball of stress in her stomach constricted.
There was no way to say it right, no way to make Cole’s presence more palatable.
Bryn reached out to rest a hand over her mother’s. “The guest at Bellefleur is Cole Dempsey.”
“Cole Dempsey? Who is that?”
“He’s Wade Dempsey’s son,” Bryn explained patiently. “He’s an attorney now, in Baton Rouge. He’s been investigating Aimee’s death, Mom.”
Patsy sank back in her chair, her pale pink manicured fingers sliding out of Bryn’s hand. Did she understand what Bryn was saying?
“You know he never believed his father was guilty,” Bryn continued. “And now he says he has new evidence—the original forensic report that was never produced at trial. It shows there were scrapings taken from beneath Aimee’s nails, and that the DNA didn’t match his father’s.”
The flare of sharp pain in Patsy’s vague eyes gave Bryn hope. “What does that mean?” Patsy asked in a thin voice.
“What he’s saying is that Aimee struggled with someone else that night. Not Wade Dempsey. And that maybe Wade Dempsey even interrupted the killer, and tried to save Aimee.” She leaned further toward her mother, recapturing her hand. Patsy’s fingers lay limp and frail in hers. Trembling. “If Aimee’s killer is still out there, we have to find him. Mom, do you have any idea who else might have killed Aimee?”
“Wade Dempsey killed Aimee.” Her mother spoke automatically, and Bryn’s heart tore at the pain in her broken voice. But she had to take advantage of this moment of lucidity. She had to know if there was anything her mother hadn’t told her.
“What if he didn’t? What if Aimee’s murderer has been free all this time? Did you ever think anyone else could have killed Aimee?”
Patsy was staring at the television again, and there were tears tracing down her cheeks. She didn’t say anything.
“Mom,” Bryn whispered, “do you remember anything you and Aimee talked about that last day, when she brought the tea up to your room?”
Bryn felt tears brimming her eyes. Maybe if she’d spent that last afternoon with Aimee, she’d have known what happened.
“She was upset about the baby,” Patsy said.
Bryn blinked. “What?”
Patsy looked at Bryn. The unsettling vagueness was back in her eyes. “If Rianna hadn’t found out she was pregnant with Brandon’s baby, she’d have told Clint she still loved him.”
Oh, God, she was talking about the show again.
“Have you done your homework, darling? Tell Aimee to brush her teeth.”
A shiver swept down Bryn’s spine. The worst was when her mother slipped back into the past.
“I’ll go do my homework now,” Bryn said softly. A long painful beat passed. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
Before she left, she took a few minutes to go back to her mother’s room where Emmie was stashing folded laundry in her mother’s armoire. She explained about Cole and asked Emmie to call if her mother showed any signs of being distraught about it later when she thought about it again. If she remembered it.
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?” Bryn knew she didn’t need to specify what she meant.
Emmie’s dark eyes saddened. “Yes. I’m so sorry, honey.”
The big house waited for her with oppressive gloom despite the activity that had begun in her absence. A bakery truck was pulled around back through the carriage entrance. Melodie’s cute little Volkswagen bug was parked on the side, next to Bryn’s old Chevy Nova. The garden club was responsible for supplying their own food. Bryn was supplying the tea, china and service, and location.
Originally, the party had been planned for outdoors, but with the weather, it would need to be shifted to the front parlor. She was just relieved to find no blinking message on her phone telling her the tea had been cancelled. This was her first community hosting event and she needed it to go off without a hitch.
The last thing she needed was Cole Dempsey in the house.
Cole slipped off a pair of reading glasses as he snapped shut the St. Salome Parish phone directory. He’d found addresses and phone numbers for a good percentage of the names Bryn had supplied. He’d have to track down some of the girls they’d hung out with that summer, find out their married names and where they lived if they’d moved away. Bryn had given him what information she had, but she’d lost track of some of her and Aimee’s friends, and he’d have to wait till she had time to dig out the other records she’d promised that were in storage.
For now he’d start with the ones he’d found in the directory. The next step was contact, but he didn’t intend to make it by phone.
Voices drifted in through the barely cracked bedroom window between claps of thunder, followed by the sound of a door crashing shut and a truck lumbering away. He’d seen some kind of delivery vehicle come around to the back while he’d been going through the directory.
He realized he was starving. He hadn’t eaten anything since Bryn’s sweet potato muffin and coffee this morning. Coming downstairs, he noticed the parlor w
as dark and quiet, but as he headed into the kitchen, he found a hive of activity. Several blue-haired old ladies chattered away as they placed petit fours, crustless sandwich wedges and pastel-colored mints in silver trays and bowls. The aroma of rich tea filled the air.
Bryn looked over her shoulder as she poured the steaming brew into an elaborately-footed silver pot. Rose-patterned china cups were stacked on the old fruitwood table. Someone had filled several earthenware jugs and glass vases with a profusion of flowers in fuchsia and yellow.
The chatter stopped and the faded curious eyes of the ladies in their floral dresses and colorful hats nailed him.
“I was looking for a sandwich,” he said.
“Are you ready for me to set up the parlor?” Melodie asked, breezing in from outside. The rain had slowed to a light tapping, and her short hair was wet and frizzed.
“Yes, thanks,” Bryn told her. “Start with the trays and I’ll be right back to help you with the china. Excuse me, ladies. I have a guest.” She put down the pot and dragged Cole by the arm.
She didn’t look excited to see him. Not that this was a surprise.
“Your guest is welcome to help himself to our refreshments,” one of the ladies said, nodding at the tray of sandwich wedges.
“I was hoping for a man sandwich,” Cole said in Bryn’s ear, inhaling her delectably sweet jessamine scent as she continued pulling on his arm.
“We don’t have any man sandwiches today,” Bryn hissed, dragging him completely out of the kitchen now. “We’re having a tea. A garden club tea. And the bed and breakfast accommodations don’t include any meals other than breakfast. You’ll have to go out.”
“I guess this means you don’t want to introduce me to the garden club,” he said teasingly, enjoying himself. Bryn’s hair was mussed, stray wisps coming out from where she’d tucked it behind her ear, and she had a smudge of something white on her nose that looked very lickable.
“Not really.”
They’d stopped in the corridor between the kitchen and the foyer because he’d dug his heels in before she could drag him another step. He reached up and wiped away the creamy smudge off the tip of her nose. And wanted to do more than touch her. He couldn’t look at her without remembering their kiss—and the rebellious heat between the two of them that hadn’t died when Aimee had.
“I was helping take out the petit fours,” she said, brushing her own hand over her nose to check for any remainders. “I must have gotten some of the icing on my fingers and then— Anyway, please go,” she said in a lowered voice. “This is important to me. To the future of Bellefleur.”
He noticed the slight puffiness around her eyes. Had she been crying?
“Did you talk to your mother?”
Her expression tightened. “I can’t discuss my mother right now. I really have a lot to do.”
“Let me help.”
She shook her head almost violently and stepped away from him. “No.”
“I just meant, let me help you set up. I can take some of the load off Melodie in getting all those trays carried in to the parlor.” He noted her continued hesitation. “You could use some extra hands, and I’d be happy to help.”
He meant his offer sincerely. She was under a lot of pressure and it was getting to her more than she liked if the strained redness in her secret eyes was any indication. And her stress was getting to him more than he liked as well.
“Look, we’re talking the St. Salome Garden Club here,” she went on tensely. “Trust me, they don’t really get their hands dirty in their gardens. But they do spend a lot of money and hold a lot of prestigious events. It’s a coup for me to get them to hold one of their teas here. These are ladies from some of the best families in Azalea Bend. The rest of them will start arriving any minute. I don’t want your help. Don’t you get it? I don’t want you here at all.”
A conflicted shadow crossed through her complicated eyes, reminding him that she was hurting, that she was confused and torn apart by what he’d come to Azalea Bend to do. But an old fire coiled in Cole’s chest nonetheless. Her words wrought a stabbing reminder of what his place had always been in this town, whether she’d meant it that way or not.
He didn’t quite succeed in keeping the bitterness from his voice. “I think I get it, Bryn.”
With that he turned and left.
Chapter 9
She felt like a heel and she hated herself for the weakness. Cole had offered to help, and she’d treated him like a leper—which was what he deserved for the way he’d stormed into her life. Yet she didn’t like the way her behavior made her feel.
Add to that the pressure of Cole’s claims about Aimee’s death, the hovering ordeal of her mother’s condition and the ever-present concern about Bellefleur’s future…
No wonder she was ready to crack. Just one Moon Pie was definitely not going to be enough tonight. The tea had gone well after Cole had left, but she was just exhausted.
In fact, she was on her third chocolate-covered, marshmallow-filled cookie sandwich when she heard him come in. The rain had stopped hours ago, leaving the house eerily quiet. Half of her prayed he’d go straight upstairs to bed, and the other half— Whoa. What the other half of her wanted was scaring the daylights out of her.
He walked into the kitchen and she could see him taking in the scene. Empty cookie pie wrappers and Bryn sitting all alone in the shadowy room, the only illumination coming from the light over the sink. He didn’t say anything for a long beat, then he grabbed a cane-back chair, flipped it around and straddled it.
“Moon me, baby.”
She had to laugh, almost choking on the bite of gooey chocolate and marshmallow in her mouth in the process. She managed to swallow it down.
“Help yourself.”
“Sure you want to share?” he asked. “I don’t want you to go hungry or anything.”
There was a twinkle in those hard eyes of his, or maybe it was just the bulb flickering in the light over the sink, about to burn out.
“Shut up. I’m pigging out. Stop me.” She shoved the whole box of Moon Pies at him.
He took one out and unwrapped it. “Want me to put the rest of these away to save you from yourself?”
She laughed again, and it felt good. She hadn’t laughed much lately. “Please.”
Cole put the box of goodies on the kitchen counter near the sink then came back, straddling the chair again. “There you go. You’re safe now. So how’d your tea party go?”
“Fine.” She watched him take a bite of his Moon Pie. Then she watched him lick a crumb of cookie from the corner of his lip. Safe? No, she was far from safe. Not with Cole here, all sexy and delicious-looking and not angry as she’d expected him to be. Why didn’t he ever look like a stiff, proper lawyer? In his jeans and black T-shirt, he looked like a bad boy instead, all steamy sexual energy and dangerous, pinning gazes. She tried really hard to focus. “Did you get something to eat?” She wanted to ask him what he’d been doing for six hours. It was nearly 10:00 p.m.
Maybe he’d gone to Baton Rouge. Maybe he had a girlfriend.
Maybe she should have her head examined.
He nodded. “Mama’s Cajun Kitchen,” he told her between bites.
Mama’s was a relatively new place out on the highway toward Baton Rouge. Most of its customers were travelers passing through or staying at the newer motels. And since a rave review in the city newspaper, people actually drove out from Baton Rouge just to eat at Mama’s.
Bryn figured Cole would know that. And as intense as he could be, even he needed a break from the thing that was taking over their lives. The past.
“Then I drove around for a while,” he added. “Tried to find a few of the people on my list.”
He’d obviously meant it when he’d said he wasn’t going to be wasting a minute of these two weeks. “Did you?” she asked.
Cole shook his head. “The Fleur de Lis was closed. I tried Erica Saville’s home address but she wasn’t there either. I tried
a couple of other addresses I’d found in the directory, but no luck.”
“It’s Friday night. And the Zydeco Festival’s going on. Lots of people are out.”
“You’re not,” he pointed out. He took another bite of the cookie pie and watched her.
“Bellefleur’s pretty much a twenty-four/seven kind of job,” she told him. Not that she felt like partying anyway. “Some guests came in from Lake Charles for the weekend.”
She’d hoped to fill up the plantation’s rooms with Zydeco tourists, but it hadn’t happened. She’d spent the evening analyzing promotion strategies to increase her business by the next local event. Trouble was, promotion cost money. After the couple from Lake Charles had dropped off their bags and taken off for their night on the town, she’d walked around the mansion wondering which treasured piece she was going to have to sell next. And whether it was all worth it. It had been a stressful day all around.
And she’d taken some of that stress out on Cole.
His chair scraped back, and she watched him walk over to the sink and put his wrapper in the trash. He moved toward the hall, but turned back in the doorway.
All he had to do was look at her for her heart to flip-flop. His darkly brooding eyes held hers with all that mysterious intensity that so defined him.
And so confused her.
“You look tired, Bryn,” he said softly. “Go to bed.”
“I have guests,” she said. “They’ll need to be let in.”
Cole had let himself in with his guest key, but for safety purposes she flipped the security lock at ten o’clock every night. Guests who came in later than that had to be let in and the mansion secured again. With the Zydeco Festival in play tonight, she could be up late.
He stood there for another long beat and she knew she should say more, wanted to say more…
“Good night, Bryn.” He left.
Her insides twisted with a sense of urgency to make him understand her rudeness, forgive her. But the words to explain stopped in her throat and she let him walk away. Alone, she crumpled the cookie pie wrapper in a tight fist then tossed it on the table. The bulb over the sink chose that moment to snap.
Cole Dempsey’s Back in Town Page 8