Cole Dempsey’s Back in Town

by Suzanne McMinn

  “I’m just glad my Patsy won’t know this time. She grieved Aimee something fierce. She’ll forget about you. She already has forgotten about you, hasn’t she? She remembers me. Me and our Camellia.”

  Flowers. He was talking about flowers? And he was calling her mother his Patsy. Her mind stumbled to make sense of his words even as her focus wavered. Pain radiated from her crown to her toes.

  “What are you talking about?” she whispered. She had to keep him talking. When he was done talking, he was going to kill her.

  “Our baby,” he said, and something fierce entered his voice. “Our baby Camellia.”

  His baby?

  “What baby?”

  “Foolish girl.” Now his tone turned harsh. His eyes peering over her burned like liquid mercury. “You didn’t notice anything that was going on that summer, did you? Always sneaking off with that Dempsey boy. If Aimee hadn’t noticed things, either, she wouldn’t have had to die.”

  “Why did Aimee have to die?” Bryn asked, her voice hitching.

  “She knew about the baby. She knew it was mine. She came up to Patsy’s room that afternoon with her tea. She caught me with your mother.”

  Bryn’s breath caught, and her heart tripped dully.

  “Oh, Mathilde, she knew all along. She helped us. She covered up for us. But she was off that day and that stupid sister of yours brought the tea up before I was gone. Patsy said she’d take care of it, but Aimee was crying. I knew she’d be trouble.”

  “You were having an affair with my mother?” They’d had a baby? A maelstrom of emotions tumbled through her. But she didn’t understand. “Why did you kill Aimee?”

  “Mr. Louvel, he fired Wade Dempsey. Patsy told him she was having an affair with him. She hadn’t been feeling well, and when she’d gone to the doctor, a blood test proved she was in fact pregnant. She’d taken a test and when the doctor called, he told Mr. Louvel it was positive. It was that idiot Dr. Biddle. He was a friend of your father’s. Biddle didn’t know it wasn’t Mr. Louvel’s baby—couldn’t be his baby because Patsy hadn’t slept with him in years. But she protected me. I knew she would. She needed me. Mr. Louvel, all he cared about was his business. I was there for Patsy. I grew her camellias and I brought them to her. I paid attention to her. That’s all she wanted, a little attention. And I gave her a lot of it.”

  Her mother. Her desperate, depressed mother who’d just wanted attention. Bryn felt sick as Emile Brouchard’s words pounded painfully through her brain.

  “Did she know?” she whispered roughly. God, don’t let him say her mother knew—

  “She thought Wade Dempsey killed Aimee,” Mr. Brouchard said. “I went back that night. I heard Mr. Louvel order Wade Dempsey off the plantation. I heard them fighting, heard Dempsey threaten him before he left. And I waited. I wanted to see Patsy, make sure she was all right. But she drove off and Mr. Louvel chased after her.”

  The memories of that awful night slashed through Bryn’s pain. There was so much she hadn’t known then, and it was so much worse than she could have imagined.

  “I saw you take off with that Dempsey boy. Aimee was outside, and Drake Cavanaugh came. They argued. I don’t know about what, but when he left, I had my chance. I’d heard her tell you before you went down to the river that she was going to fix everything, that Wade Dempsey wouldn’t be fired when she was through. And when she saw me, she told me what she was going to do. She was going to tell her father that it wasn’t Wade Dempsey that Patsy had been sleeping with. It was me. She was going to fix everything—for you, so you could keep whoring around with that piece-of-scum Dempsey boy.”

  Oh God, oh God. Guilt burned through her chest. Aimee had died because of her. Aimee had been determined to fix everything—for her.

  “She knew about the baby. She’d heard me and Patsy talking about it when she came in the room.”

  Then Aimee had gone into town and met with Erica Saville and asked questions about pregnancy. Now it all fit. The puzzle pieces clicked in place. But it was too late.

  “It would have ruined everything if Aimee had told the truth,” he explained simply. “I had no choice. I had to kill her. I had to do it for Patsy and for me. I couldn’t leave my Patsy. And Patsy wouldn’t come away with me. She wouldn’t leave you and Aimee. She knew Mr. Louvel had the power to keep you girls if she divorced him.”

  He said it as if it were all perfectly rational. He hadn’t had a choice. He’d done what he had to do to stay with Patsy. Even if that meant killing one of her girls.

  “Wade Dempsey came back drunk,” he went on calmly. “He saw me with Aimee. She wasn’t dead yet. I’d hit her and she’d fallen down. I’d knocked the wind out of her, that’s all. We fought, Dempsey and I, and then I heard the cars coming up the drive. Aimee screamed and I shoved her down again. She hit her head and I knew she was dead that time. By the time Mr. Louvel got there, I was gone and he wasn’t listening to anything Dempsey had to say. He was too drunk to talk straight anyway. He shot him dead. Good riddance,” he spat.

  Bryn felt cold nausea wash her. She had to keep him talking.

  “What happened to the baby?”

  “Patsy went to the sanitarium. She got Hugh Cavanaugh to draw up adoption papers for her. She called me and told me about it. She knew Mr. Louvel wasn’t going to let her keep the baby, and I just wanted her to come back. She told me she was going to name her Camellia if it was a girl. She had a couple in the Midwest who was going to take her and they’d promised to keep the name. I just wanted her to come home, to come back to me. I knew she still wouldn’t leave Bellefleur. She wouldn’t leave you.

  “She’d lost enough. She still had you, she still had me, and I had her. She moved into the cottage. She’s happy. I make her happy.”

  And she always kept a camellia with her bone china angels. Bryn’s heart clenched.

  “What happened to Camellia?” she breathed.

  “She was stillborn. And by then, it was all over. Cavanaugh, I don’t think he was sure if it was Wade Dempsey or his own damn son who’d killed Aimee, but he wasn’t going to risk anything. They covered it up, Cavanaugh and Ormond and Skelly. Nobody could bring back Aimee and nobody wanted to know who killed her anyway. Nobody but you and that damn Cole Dempsey. Fifteen years later. Now you dig up the past. Well, now you’ll find out what happens when you don’t let sleeping dogs lie.”

  “Drake thought Wade Dempsey was the father of my mother’s baby,” Bryn said suddenly, sharply. Her fogged mind struggled for clarity. “He had to. He brought that folder to me and Cole. He said it was proof my mother had slept with Wade Dempsey and he was going to tell everyone if we didn’t give him the original forensic report.”

  “Hugh Cavanaugh and Mr. Louvel didn’t know what I knew—that Wade Dempsey was sterile,” Mr. Brouchard hissed. “If anyone sees those papers now, they’re going to start asking questions. There’s no way Mr. Louvel would have put his own child up for adoption, and I’m not the only one who knew Wade Dempsey couldn’t have been the father of that baby. They’re going to wonder who else could have been the father.”

  “But they won’t be asking questions if you and Drake and Dempsey are dead. Once I’m through with you,” he said, menacing over her. “I’ll take care of Cavanaugh and Dempsey. Nobody ever has to know about the baby, and nobody will care who killed Aimee. They’ll shut down the investigation. You, Dempsey, Cavanaugh. You’re all about to meet an unfortunate end. When I cut the phone lines at the great house, I figured it would just be over for you and Dempsey. But all three of you together is even better. Get up. Now!”

  “They’ll care who killed me,” Bryn gasped, horror soaking her. “They’ll care who killed Drake and Cole.”

  “I’ll make it look like Cavanaugh did it. It’s his gun, isn’t it? He shot Cole—and if I have to, I’ll shoot him again. I’ll make sure he’s dead. And you.” His eyes fired deadly resolve. “Then Cavanaugh turned the gun on himself. You’ll all be dead.”

  Bryn’s he
art screamed for Cole. She was going to die and so was he if Mr. Brouchard took her back to the house. Cole was bleeding horribly, might be unconscious already.

  A gunshot ripped past her ear, into the floor. “Get up,” Brouchard ordered.

  She tasted panic and pain. She scrambled to her feet. Her vision swam again and she nearly blacked out. But she couldn’t pass out. She had to get away. He was going to take her back to Bellefleur. She had to escape.

  He waved the gun at her and she stumbled to the door. She yanked it open. She could do this. She could get away. She had no choice but to try.

  She pulled open the door. He was right behind her. Rain spattered and the wind whipped. She stumbled off the porch and then she ran.

  Pain blasted through her head again and the next thing she knew she was on the ground, black spots everywhere. Mr. Brouchard jammed the gun against her neck.

  “Don’t try that again,” he rasped. He jerked her to her feet and he pushed her forward. She could barely see. She tasted blood and her head roared.

  It seemed like forever, but it could only have been minutes. He pushed her up the portico steps of Bellefleur. The door lay open. In the spill of the oil lamp, Drake’s body hadn’t moved. His eyes weren’t open.

  A bloody smear was all that was left of Cole. He was gone. Hope unfurled in her chest but she had no time to wonder where he’d gone.

  The butt end of the pistol connected with the back of her head. She slammed onto the floor, pain ricocheting through her body. A gunshot blasted, and oil and fire spattered everywhere. With a shock, she realized he’d shot out the lamp. Twisting desperately, she found the gun pointed at her. He was going to kill them all—and leave Bellefleur on fire!

  A solid shape appeared from the doorway into the office. A dark, hulking bloodied creature swam through Bryn’s shocked vision.

  Cole lunged forward, sank something dark and heavy on the back of Brouchard’s head. Emile crumpled as oil from the lamp spread across the floor, igniting flames that rushed up the drapes as they reached the windows. Bryn felt the blackness swamping her again, but she pushed her eyes open by sheer will. They had to get out. And Cole looked as though he was about to collapse.

  “This place is going to go up fast. I can’t carry you, sweetheart. I can barely carry myself.” Whatever adrenaline had brought him this far, he was fading fast. His face was white in the shining fire.

  Bryn reeled to her feet. In another few seconds, the flames were going to consume the foyer. Then she saw he wasn’t leaving. Unsteady as he was, he was going back for Drake, and she knew he’d never do it alone. He’d collapse. And she wasn’t leaving Cole, not again.

  “Get out,” he yelled at her, but she reached down with numbed fingers to help him drag Drake’s heavy, unconscious body. They made it onto the portico, stumbling down the steps where they left Drake. Blood soaked Cole’s shirt and the blackness closed in on her vision as they fell helplessly to the wet ground.

  Bellefleur was burning. The aching, anguished thought roiled through the mists of her pain-seared mind.

  She floated, cold, in the hot, wet night. Crackling fire spat somewhere nearby, and she knew she had to open her eyes, had to move. Had to go back for Mr. Brouchard. Had to try to put out the fire.

  Her legs collapsed under her when she tried to stand, and she sank, heartsick and nauseous, to the sodden ground. It was too late for Bellefleur, too late for Emile Brouchard. The foyer was ablaze and already it had gone through to the second story. Fire spat from an upper window. Rain poured down onto her face, but inside, the flames roared.

  Indigo sky lit by sparks rolled above her, and she swung her hurting gaze to the man at her side. The completely still, bleeding man she loved.

  “Cole,” she whispered, pleaded, leaning over him to clutch his dear face as the nightmare of fire and rain raged on. He’d lost so much blood. Panicked fingers tore through her, clamping tight to her heart. “I love you. Don’t die on me. I need you.”

  He opened his eyes, his beautiful, intense, searing eyes. Far, far in the distance, she heard sirens. From her mother’s cottage, Emmie burst onto the path toward them.

  Help was coming. Finally.

  “Bryn—”

  “Shhh. Don’t talk.”

  “No, but…Cavanaugh…the adoption papers—”

  “I know. I know everything. Your father’s innocent. It’s over,” she said, and she started crying.

  “No.” He reached up a shaking, desperate, hopeful hand to touch her face. “It’s just begun. I need you, too. I love you.”

  And if he was all she had left, she knew then and there he was more than enough. He was everything.

  He always had been.

  Epilogue

  The healing—both physical and emotional—came in slow degrees, one day at a time. Cole saw it as a journey, a path to the future. His life had become more than his past.

  They found Mathilde’s body in the garden where Emile Brouchard had been digging. The investigation into Aimee’s murder had gone wild in the press as Skelly and Cavanaugh traded confessions and barbs, blaming each other and Ormond and anyone else they could find to point a finger at. Brouchard had died in the fire that had burned Bellefleur, and Patsy Louvel had been no more than vaguely cognizant of the events that had transpired or her role in them. As the tangle of secrets and lies came out, Harlan Michel got his wish—he became a star in the blitz of media coverage.

  Cole couldn’t have cared less. He managed to keep himself and Bryn out of the spotlight as much as possible. They’d found all the truth they needed in each other. In the ashes of the past, they’d discovered the future.

  And Cole looked forward to every second of it more than he could have ever imagined, in a place he’d never dreamed he could be happy.

  “It’s coming along,” Bryn said then, linking her fingers through his as they stood in the gauzy autumn evening and surveyed the day’s progress at Bellefleur.

  The mansion hadn’t completely burned down—the rain had helped. There had been a shell worth recovering, rebuilding.

  “Maybe by spring,” he said softly, squeezing her hand. He felt the band of gold on her ring finger that he’d placed there a month after the fire. Two months since then and he still couldn’t believe she was his wife. The joy of it filled all the empty, grieving places in his heart, leaving no room for the pain and bitterness that had once ruled him.

  Bryn had found her own peace, too, even with Patsy. It was too late for her mother to understand the full consequences of her deceptions—and too late for Bryn to blame her. Like Cole, she was ready to move on. And somehow, in rebuilding Bellefleur, they’d also brought their two worlds together and made it theirs. The house would never be the same. And that was a good thing. It would be what they made it—a home.

  For now they’d begun their life together in Baton Rouge, and Cole was back at work at his firm. But like Bryn, he couldn’t walk away from Bellefleur now, not permanently, and Baton Rouge wasn’t too far away for a commute. They’d have children someday. Children who deserved to know their legacy.

  “What do you think of Alexandre?” she asked, looking up at him with amazing, clear water hyacinth eyes, no longer aching with hurt but shining instead with love.

  Cole tugged his brows together. “Alexandre Louvel?” he guessed, trying to figure what she meant. “He saved our lives, that’s what I think of him.” It had been that small, heavy bust of the man who’d shaped Bellefleur’s prosperity in the sugarcane business that he’d crashed down onto the back of Emile Brouchard’s head that shocking night three months before. Alexandre Louvel had secured his family’s future all over again.

  Bryn’s lips curved into a beautiful smile. “For the baby, silly. If it’s a boy.”

  The oaks sighed as the breeze kicked up around them. Far away over the river, a brown pelican lifted up off the bank and soared.

  Cole’s heart burst. Understanding hit him, along with an incredible sense of completeness. He claime
d his wife’s precious mouth in a hungry kiss. He would never get enough of Bryn, never. And now—

  “Alexandre Dempsey,” he breathed as he released her sweet mouth. “It sounds perfect to me.”

  And it was.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-7113-9

  COLE DEMPSEY’S BACK IN TOWN

  Copyright © 2005 by Suzanne McMinn

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