by Nancy Gideon
“No. But I respect him, and I’d expect you to do the same even if you no longer have feelings for him.”
“You expect too much, girl. There’s nothing respectable about who he is or what he’s done with his life. The son I loved is dead and gone. That man out there is a stranger to me.”
“Then treat him with the decency you would have for any stranger.” Her tone softened. “We won’t stay long.”
“And you won’t tell Louella?”
“Of course not. I have too much respect for you to be such a poor guest.”
“I don’t want him to come inside my home” was the line-in-the-sand concession.
“I’m sure he won’t unless he’s invited.”
“That’ll be a cold day.”
What in the frozen hell had he done to fracture this strong woman’s love for him?
Giles greeted Brigit with an anxious question in his eyes. She rubbed her palm along his sleeve in passing. “Promise kept.”
Irene St. Clair appeared at the door to stare at her son without a trace of emotion. Her announcement was like the firm drop of an ax.
“I suspect Emmett will want to see you. You can stay until then.”
When Irene retreated into the house, Giles loitered down on the dock, catching up with an animated Louella, and Brigit rocked in the glider opposite a sprawled Boyd St. Clair. Though he was relaxed and flirtatiously friendly, she thought of a deceptively snoozing cat outside a mousehole. He was someone not to be underestimated. But he could also be useful.
“What did he do?” she asked.
His smile never faltered. “Who? Saint Giles? The family golden boy? Hard to believe he could do anything so heinous that his doting mama would turn him out. Have you asked him?”
“I’m asking you.”
“If I tell you, you’re going to owe me a favor.”
“I don’t do favors for men I don’t know . . . or trust.”
He laughed at that. “Clever girl. How did Giles manage to latch on to you?”
“I’ll tell you after you answer my question.”
A grin. “Fair enough.” He glanced over at his cousin and sister, his expression sobering. “You could say all this is my fault. If I hadn’t gone to him with what I found out, he’d be living that dream his mama had for him: college graduate, good job, married, and pumping out grandchildren for her. I wanted to be him so bad, to be good at everything, have doors opening for me, the chance to get out of this place and be somebody. But unfortunately, I was born with the looks instead of the brains.”
“What did you find out?” Brigit pressed.
“I found out why his daddy died.”
As they rocked, Brigit listened to Boyd spin his family’s tale of honor and tragedy. Of two sisters, one strong-willed and righteous and one of weak disposition and fragile health. Of the men they married, one solid and hardworking, the other a dreamer always chasing the next big thing.
“My favorite times growing up was coming over here every Sunday, even if it meant getting all spit-polished, ’cause God didn’t appreciate scuffed shoes or unkempt little boys.” He grinned wide, and Brigit could imagine what a hellion he’d been. And still was.
“Uncle Clovis and Giles, they was two peas, you know. Did everything together. My daddy was always traveling, working on some plan to get rich to pay for my mama’s doctor bills. He was too proud to take the hand Clovis offered until Mama passed, birthing Louella. Then we moved over here lock and stock so Aunt Irene could tend us.”
Boyd settled into his colorful ruminating, painting a vivid picture of Clovis Robichaux as an incorruptible man of focus and decency who loved his family and toiled to provide them with every need. He wasn’t flashy or ambitious, like Emmett St. Clair, and was constantly discouraging his brother-in-law’s risky ideas to better their circumstances with a gentle yet firm practicality.
“Now, Aunt Irene, that woman can call down hellfire and plagues to make a Baptist preacher weep like a little girl. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a good woman, taking us in like we was her own. But we all knew it was Giles. He was the one. He was her shining star.”
Brigit cast a glance at Giles, seeing the amazing boy he must have been to sprout from humble roots and become the academic achiever, the athletic standout who drew recruiters to their tiny community, the one who was going to be the somebody none of the rest of them could ever hope to be. “And you resented him for it.”
Boyd looked genuinely surprised. “Oh, hell, no. He deserved everything he got. Worked for it over at Sammy’s every summer and after practice. Saved for it whilst I was out spending every penny on bad habits. He tried his best to drag me down that path with him, but naw, I was busy chasing the girls and outrunning the law. I wanted that fast car, not some stuffy degree.”
“What happened to Clovis Robichaux?”
“He died because of who he was. Honorable and unbendable. He had a great business going here, money coming in from the tours and bringing them big bass tournaments to our front door. There was nothing he couldn’t make a boat do.”
Boyd got quiet, the sparkle dimming in his gaze as he stared down at his laced fingers. “He was a genius with a high-performance engine, had a touch for wringing out that horsepower. He had a particular client who paid top dollar to get his boats souped up—for racing, he told Uncle Clo. Until Clo got to thinking maybe it was for outracing the DEA.
“Me and Giles was coming home from school when we heard the crash and come up on his folks’ pickup. It’d gone off the bridge into the creek just up the road apiece. Thought it was an accident until we saw the bullet hole in the driver’s-side window. We managed to get Aunt Irene out ’fore the whole thing went underwater. Her hip and leg were busted up something terrible.”
“And Clovis?” Brigit asked softly.
“There was no saving him. He was dead, bullet to the brain.”
Brigit closed her eyes as a similar sense of loss swept over her. Remembering that heart-pounding dread as she and Kendra huddled together in their bedroom while screams from below filled the air. That first glimpse of Silas’s stark expression as he knelt to put his arms around them, saying with a terrifying maturity, “Don’t be afraid. I will never let anything harm you.” That was when she’d known she’d never see her parents again.
“What did the police think happened?”
Boyd shrugged. “The locals nosed around for a while, then brought in big-gun staties, but them boys seemed more interested in pinning something on Clovis than working to find out what really went down. Said they found some illegal product, they called it, tucked away in one of our boats and built up this fancy fiction about Clovis muling drugs, taking a taste for himself, and getting cashed for it. Sounded good enough to get the case put away on some back shelf reserved for lawbreakers who got what they deserved.”
The injustice of it had Brigit’s temper thrumming. “Did Giles believe it?”
“That his daddy was running dope? Hell, no. He’d sooner believe he’d grown a tail and a pair a horns. Made such a pest of himself that the local badges came out to have a talk with my daddy. I don’t know what they said to him or him to Giles, but he let it go after that and settled down to make his mama proud. Until I called him and told him he needed to come home from that highfalutin’ school to take care of some business.”
“What kind of business?” Brigit leaned forward to grip Boyd’s knees.
“Family business. And that’s when he stepped off that high road onto the dark path he’s been walking ever since.”
While Louella chattered endlessly to bring him up to date on every man, woman, and child he’d ever so much as bumped into by accident, Giles kept a covert eye on the slow-moving glider where bright and dark heads bent close together.
Whatever they were up to, it couldn’t be good.
Concerning himself with the possible mayhem their two meteoric talents for trouble could conceive kept Giles from dwelling on how much it hurt to look in from the ban
ned outside at the life he’d been so much a part of.
He’d made his choice, but he’d never imagined how soul-crushing it would be to live with it day after day, year after year, with no chance of redemption. His mother would never forgive him, ever, and he had to respect her for that. What he’d done went against every tenet she’d built her life upon. And the way he’d done it had torn away the last shred of decency he could lay claim to.
He remembered as if it had happened to someone else that night he’d ripped up through the pretty row of azaleas in Boyd’s brand-new Mustang, hollering for his mama. She’d come out in her nightdress to shush him and scold him for having one too many. But it wasn’t alcohol he was drunk on.
He’d stumbled around to the back of the car to pop the trunk, then turned to his mother, wobbling on unsteady legs, his eyes hot and glazed with the unfamiliar madness that had ridden with him that night. He’d told her, “Look what I’ve brought you, Mama. That justice you deserve.”
She’d come toward him with a reluctant dread, hypnotized by what she must have seen in his face, by the crazed mix of prideful fierceness and shuddering horror, drawn by the way his breathing came low and jagged in a raw primal rhythm. Her steps faltered when the harsh glare of the yard’s mercury light gleamed on the blood still wet on his hands, on his jacket, on his face, black like a life-choking oil slick.
She’d come around the back of the car, her gaze fixed on his, her eyes filled with a flat despair as she finally looked down into the trunk. And screamed. And screamed.
She’d looked at him the same way since then. As if he’d become what he’d killed in his father’s name.
“She’s very pretty.”
“What?” Pulled from his bleak thoughts, Giles turned to an impatient Louella.
“Boyd said you’re gonna marry her. Is that true?”
He cocked a smile at her. “Have you ever known your brother to lie?”
She swatted his arm. “Stop teasing. Are you or aren’t you?”
“What do you think? Think I should?”
“She shore dresses nice.”
“That’s the main thing I was looking for in a wife.”
She made a face, then mused, “She’s nothing like Maggie.”
“No,” Giles agreed, “she’s not.”
“Is she nice?”
He laughed. “No. But then what nice girl would put up with me?”
“If you marry her, can I come stay with you in New Orleans?”
That huge jump in topic took him unaware. “What?”
“Can I come live with you in the city as soon as I finish school? I could get me a job there, and I wouldn’t be no bother a’tall.”
“Whoa, there, girl. What would your mama say?”
“My mama’s dead, Giles, and yours would rather chain me up in the yard then let me have any kind of life at all.”
Chain her up. That made him think uncomfortably of what Brigit had said. To distract himself from it, he looked to logic for an answer. “My kind of life is no kind for a girl your age.”
“Then you’re saying no?” she wailed. “I’ll wither up and die here! I’ll be just as dried out and sour as Corene before I even get a taste of what’s out there.”
Giles’s attention skipped over her dramatics. “What’s wrong with Corene?”
Fuming that he’d changed the subject, Lou nodded toward the drive. “You’ll see in a minute.”
A rattling F150 rolled to a stop, and its two occupants got out. Giles’s first thought was to wonder when his uncle Emmett had gone gray. His second was to realize his lovely little sister had become a severe and unsmiling copy of their mother. He and Lou walked up the drive, stopping both Emmett and Corene cold in surprise.
“Giles? I never thought to see you again.” Emmett approached with arms wide and eyes awash with tears. Though he barely came up to Giles’s shoulder, the engulfing hug made him feel like a boy again. And it was such a good feeling. The older man who’d done his best to fill Clovis Robichaux’s shoes leaned back to smile up at him. “You look good, boy, a damned sight for these sore eyes.”
“You, too, Uncle Emmett.” Giles stepped clear to focus on his sister. He said her name softly, hopefully, his heart in his eyes as she came toward him. “Hello, Cori.”
Without breaking stride, she dealt him a slap that had him staggering back a step as she kept right on walking up to the house.
“She’s got your mama’s way with words,” Emmett remarked as he patted Giles on the shoulder. “C’mon, boy. Let’s take our talk someplace a little more civilized.”
Timba’s was a rough bar around the corner of the Point where Clovis had told him never to go unless he wanted to get dead quick. So, of course, Boyd had dragged him there every chance he got. Giles remembered it as needing an upgrade to become a dive, but as they pulled into the paved parking area, he realized that had changed. Instead of mudholes, broken glass, and panhead motorcycles, the lot was filled with late-model cars. The searing neon with its tassel-twirling torso had been replaced by a sleek LCD sign proclaiming it an eating and drinking establishment. The previous owners wouldn’t have known how to spell the word.
Boyd steered his rumbling black Charger into a space and flipped up his seat to offer his hand to Brigit. She shimmied out, treating Giles to an uncomfortable amount of bare thigh and rounded bottom. He couldn’t resist placing his palm there to give her a helpful push.
As firmly pliant as he remembered.
Timba’s was a surprise on the inside as well. Remodeled into a gleaming wood-paneled sports bar, it had a low-ceilinged ambience of welcome, but that wasn’t all Giles noticed.
He’d been inside Jacques LaRoche’s club Cheveux du Chien once with Max, but he got that same all-over crawly feeling when the patrons here turned as one to eyeball him for an outsider. There was nothing odd about their appearance. Some were dressed in business suits, some in casual everyday workingman’s wear. It was the foreign, almost otherworldly way they moved, the same silky glide Max had that was both beautiful and deadly to watch.
Giles hung back slightly, letting Boyd guide Brigit up to the bar, watching Emmett wave to friends at one of the tables.
They moved the same way. Like Shape-shifters.
Boyd looked back, hesitating when he saw the blank of recognition on Giles’s face. Then he smiled, his gaze catching the light in a way that had it glittering, and called, “C’mon, Rob-E. Let’s get a table.”
Giles couldn’t get his feet to move.
Finally, smiling sympathetically, Brigit came to loop her arm through his, leaning close to whisper, “Relax. We don’t bite. Unless provoked.”
eleven
As she stretched out over her cue stick, Brigit found it difficult to pull her attention from the table where Giles sat hearing the facts of life from his uncle. She couldn’t tell from their expressions how well it was going.
“I can see down your dress,” Boyd drawled.
“Enjoy the view. It’s the closest you’ll get to exploring the lay of the land.” She cracked the cue ball, sending it glancing off the six, which in turn tapped the seven into the corner pocket.
Boyd chuckled. “Rob-E was right. You are gonna strip me clean. Not like I’d mind that too much. You never did tell me what you’re doing with him.”
“He’s my brother’s friend. He’s babysitting me.”
Boyd’s grin split wide. “So you and him aren’t . . . ?”
Brigit gave him an unblinking stare. “What do you think?”
“I know what I’d do in his place, but my cousin’s kind of hard to read these days.” He smiled when her shot went wide.
Brigit risked a glance at the group of suits at the bar, a quiver of anxiousness rippling through her. She couldn’t tell without making preternatural contact what clan they were from, maybe Terriot, maybe Guedry, maybe something local. But if she did, they’d know more about her than she was willing to give away. They hadn’t paid her any more attention th
an the average male would, but she still felt uncomfortably exposed.
“Have you got a cell phone on you, Boyd?”
“Always. Why? You wanting my number?”
She smiled. “Oh, I’ve already got that. I need to borrow your phone. I left mine back in New Orleans, and I have to make a couple of calls. Private calls.”
Boyd’s clever gaze slanted over to his cousin as if weighing the annoyance factor of complying. “All right. But this time you will owe me a favor, us being friends now and all.”
“Depends on what you want.”
His sudden candor surprised her. “Finding out about us is going to rock his world. I’m asking you to show him a little extra TLC. I’ll leave the particulars up to you.”
“I think I can manage that.” She extended her hand behind the shielding bulk of the table. “Phone.”
He passed it to her without another word and watched her tuck it into her bodice with an envying sigh before she picked up her stick. She finished clearing the table with a swift efficiency that said she’d been toying with him. Again the outstretched hand. “Pay up so I can get started on that favor.”
Boyd pressed the wad of bills into her palm, then let his gaze rove over the sight of her walking away. It was nothing short of spectacular.
Yep, his cousin still had all the luck.
Boyd ambled to the bar, smiling as he called for another round of drinks. While he waited for them, his attention was drawn to the trio lingering on the stools to his right. All were well dressed and obviously out-of-towners. The one closest nodded toward Brigit. “We were admiring your taste in women.”
“She’s something, ain’t she?”
“Is her name as beautiful as her face?”
Hearing it spoken out loud didn’t make it any easier for Giles to believe.
It was one thing accepting what Max Savoie and his friends were. It was something else to realize that members of his family were ruled by the same unnatural blood.
“How could you have kept such a thing from me? How could you lie to me?”
“We never told you any lies. I was always up-front with your mama and daddy, and it didn’t matter to them. We couldn’t have kept it quiet for much longer. Boyd was starting to transition ’bout the time you was going off to school. Having you home made it easier for him to stay in control. It was your mama’s choice to say nothing. Just like it’ll be her decision about when Louella needs to know.”