Magnolia Moon

by JoAnn Ross

  “Wouldn’t be any challenge if there wasn’t money on the line,” Nate said.

  “With that attitude, it’s a good thing you didn’ make the pros, since last I heard, gamblin’ on games was illegal.” Jack turned toward Regan. “Hi. You must be the lady I’ve been hearing about. Regan Hart.”

  “Yes.” She smiled, truly appreciative he’d used the name she’d always known. “At least that’s always been my name.”

  “We’ve got ourselves a little family experience with long-lost kids comin’ to Blue Bayou to find their roots,” he said, flashing a grin at Holly. The way she beamed back told Regan there was another story there. “Even if you find out some stuff about your past you didn’t know, it doesn’t negate all those other years.”

  He glanced up as a tall, lanky, dark-haired boy came around the corner from the direction of the guest house. “Looks like the lunch break’s over,” he said. “I’ll drive you and Ben back to school,” he told Holly. “If you’re going to be here for a while,” he said to Nate.

  “Yeah. Josh’s gonna help with the stage.”

  “Good idea.” He bestowed another warm smile on Regan and walked toward the classic cherry red GTO parked beside the house. Regan watched Josh watching the trio get in the car.

  “You just want to make sure I don’t run away,” Josh said.

  “You thinkin’ of running, cher?”

  “None of your business if I am.”

  “Well, now, you know that’s not ’xactly true, since I signed a paper taking responsibility for you.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Maybe on a good day. But I get the impression there haven’t been many of those lately.”

  Josh’s only answer was to spit into the dirt. Then his gaze drifted to the departing car. He looked like a starving child staring into a bakery window.

  “Holly sure is a pretty fille,” Nate observed.

  He didn’t respond.

  “Smart, too. Gets straight As.”

  Again no answer.

  “She and Ben are really close friends, having as much in common as they do.”

  “Big freakin’ deal.”

  Bull’s-eye. “Having a friend is sure enough a big deal. And, not that you asked, because you’re probably not real interested in pretty blond girls who smell like gardens, but they’re not boyfriend and girlfriend.

  “Ben’s goin’ with Kendra Longworth, whose maman teaches third grade at Holy Assumption school. Holly was seein’ Trey Gaffney for a time when she first got to town last spring, but they broke up after Christmas, so she’s pretty much available. Not that I’d be all that fond of the idea of my favorite niece spendin’ Mardi Gras with an amnesiac secret agent,” he said.

  “I’m not any damn spy.”

  “That’s good to hear. Seems she might jus’ have somethin’ in common with a ballplayer. Bein’ how she’s on the girls’ varsity team.”

  “Big deal. It’s still just a girls’ team.”

  “You keep that in mind when she strikes you out with her slider,” Nate said. “Now, why don’t you go get my toolbox out of the back of my truck and we’ll get to work.”

  “I’m not sure your brother would be real happy with you playing matchmaker with his daughter and a runaway juvenile delinquent,” Regan said as they watched Josh make his way in unenthusiastic slow motion toward the SUV.

  “I wasn’t matchmaking; jus’ suggesting a couple kids play ball together. After all, there’s nothing more American than baseball. Besides, like I said, Jack spent some time in juvie himself. He’s not one to pass judgment.”

  “And Dani?”

  He laughed at that. “If there’s anyone who knows both the appeal and the downside of bad boys, it’s Dani. I figure she can give her little girl the appropriate motherly advice. Besides, it’s not like they’re going to be alone. The entire town’ll be here chaperoning them. Meanwhile, it gives the kid a reason to stick around at least one more day, so maybe we can find out who he is. And what he’s running away from.”

  Seeing how they all seemed to watch out for each other somehow made small-town life not quite so suffocating to Regan.

  The outside of Beau Soleil was gorgeous. The inside quite literally took her breath away. She stared up at the mural that covered the wall of the two-story entry hall, rose to the plaster ceiling medallions, then swept up the wide curving stairway she recognized from more than one movie.

  “It’s stunning. Is it original to the house?” she asked.

  “No, but it’s real old. André Dupree had the mural painted in memory of the Grand Dérangement, when the English kicked his people out of eastern Canada, where they’d ended up after fleeing for religious freedom even before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.”

  He was telling the story as if it’d happened yesterday. Which, in some people’s minds, probably wasn’t that far off.

  “The Acadians, which is what we Cajuns were officially called, were pretty much left alone to do their own thing for the next hundred years, but after the French and Indian War, the British weren’t really happy about these French-speaking people livin’ halfway between New England and New France. They demanded the Acadians renounce their Catholic religion and pledge allegiance to England. Well, now, they were a pretty stubborn people—”

  “Were?” She arched a brow.

  He grinned. “Things don’t change much down here in the bayou. Anyway, when they refused, they were rounded up and deported. Some were sold as indentured servants to the American colonies, others were sent back to France, some ended up in concentration camps in England, and a few managed to evade deportation by hiding out in Nova Scotia.

  “Things were looking pretty bleak for them when the Spaniards entered into the situation. Since the Acadians were staunch enemies of the British by now and Catholic to boot, the Spanish decided they’d be dandy people to populate their Louisiana settlements. The Acadians, happy for a chance to reunite their families—families have always been real important in the Cajun culture—liked the beauty of the land, not to mention all the bountiful fresh foods, which tasted pretty good after their years in exile. So they dug into the swamp like crawfish.”

  “Sounds like a happy ending.” She wondered what it would be like to grow up in a place where everyone seemed to be related, if not by blood then by common experience.

  “I guess it pretty much is. There’s about a quarter million descendants of those original Acadians living around here, though the economy’s taken a hit from time to time and caused a lot to move to the cities. But wherever a Cajun goes, he always takes a bit of this place away with him. And his heart always stays here in the swamp.”

  “Is that why you stay?”

  “I don’ know.” He shrugged. “When I was a kid, I had big dreams and left for a while, but I ended up coming back and stayed for family reasons.”

  “Dani told me about your mother. I’m sorry.”

  Another shrug. “It was a bad time I wouldn’t want to relive. But there’s not much a person can do but keep on keeping on, is there?”

  “No.” Regan sighed, thinking about her own mother’s death. Karen Hart’s death, she amended.

  “Gotta be hard, losing two mothers.”

  “It’s not easy.” She no longer doubted that Linda Dale had been her birth mother. “Which is why I’m going to find out the truth of what happened, and make certain that whoever was to blame for her death pays.”

  “Why if the autopsy report turns out to be true?”

  “Those entries in her journal weren’t written by a woman about to commit suicide.”

  “Something could have happened. Maybe your father didn’t show up. Or maybe he did, and told her that he wasn’t going to leave his wife.”

  “Eliminating maybes is what I do. I need to know about her life.”

  “So you’ll have a better handle on your own.”

  Regan wasn’t as surprised as she might have been even yesterday at his understanding s
o well how his news had packed an emotional punch.

  “Yeah.”

  He led her to the huge ballroom, with high ceilings that had been painted a pale lemon yellow and lots of tall windows designed to bring the outdoor gardens inside. It took no imagination at all to envision beautiful women dressed in formal satin, hoop skirts skimming along the polished floor as they danced in the arms of their handsome, formally clad partners. The sconces circling the room were electric, but she could easily picture the warm glow of candlelight.

  “It just keeps getting better and better,” she said on a deep, appreciative sigh, surprised to discover a romantic lurking inside her.

  “You should have seen it back around Thanksgiving. Since it’s the biggest room in the house, we’ve been using it as an indoor workshop for winter and rainy days. You couldn’t go more than a couple feet without bumping into a sawhorse. Plaster and sawdust were all over everything, and the floor was covered with paint cans. After Dani decided to hold the Mardis Gras festivities here, about every carpenter, painter, and electrician in the parish has been pulling overtime.”

  “Well, they definitely earned it.” She ran her fingers over a chair rail that had been sanded as smooth as an infant’s bottom. “I wouldn’t have expected to find such craftsmanship in such a small, out-of-the-way place.”

  “Actually, towns like Blue Bayou probably hold the last remaining old-time craftsmen. Since we’re not in a real dire need for more parking spaces, we tend to hang onto our old buildings. Which means that people who know how to do restoration will probably always be able to find work, even if the annual income probably isn’t what they could make in the city.”

  “The city’s more expensive to live in, though.” She looked up at the glorious ceiling fresco someone had painstakingly restored. “And I’d imagine this sort of work is more artistically satisfying.”

  “I’ve always thought so.” He smiled easily, then opened his arms. “Viens ici, sugar.”

  “I thought we’d agreed you were taking a moratorium on trying to seduce me.”

  “I am. We just finished the floor last week and I figured we should try it out. See if it’s smooth enough for dancing, in case it rains tomorrow and we have to bring the party indoors.”

  Dammit, she was tempted. Too tempted. “There isn’t any music.”

  “No problem.” When she didn’t go to him, he closed the small distance between them. “We’ll make our own.”

  “Good try, but I think I’ll pass.”

  He tucked her hair behind her ear. “Afraid?”

  “Of you?” Her laugh was quick. “No, Callahan, I am definitely not afraid of you.”

  His fingers curved around the nape of her neck. As she watched his eyes turn from calm to stormy, she felt another one of those inner pulls that both intrigued her and ticked her off. “Maybe you should be.” He slowly lowered his head. “Maybe we should both be.”

  It would be an easy thing to back away, but just as she was about to do so, he shifted gears and dropped a quick kiss on her forehead.

  “We’d best go see what’s holdin’ up the kid, before he steals all my hand tools and heads off to the nearest pawnshop.”

  Feeling shaky, Regan followed him outside. “You’re a strange man, Callahan. I can’t get a handle on you.”

  “Me?” His laugh woke up Turnip, who’d been dozing happily in the shade of a weeping willow. Brown eyes turned limpid, as if hoping for another Milk-Bone. “I’m an open book.”

  “And I’m the queen of the Mardi Gras. That good-old-boy routine may work with your hometown belles, but I’m not buying it.”

  He grinned. “Maybe I’m one of a kind, me.”

  As irritated as she was with him for being so damn appealing, and herself for being attracted, Regan could not dispute that.

  19

  While Nate and Josh worked on the stage, Regan took her laptop into the book-lined library and began writing up her notes before the details began to slip her mind. She’d finished with the Boyce interview and her impression of Marybeth when she made the mistake of looking out the window, and her mind went as clear as glass.

  The sun had burned off all the morning fog, warming the day. She watched Nate wipe his brow with the back of his hand. He said something to Josh, who shook his head in characteristically negative response. Nate shrugged, then pulled the black T-shirt over his head, revealing a rock-hard chest that looked gilded in the golden afternoon light. A light sheen of sweat glistened on tanned flesh, drawing her attention to the arrowing of gilt hair that disappeared below the waist of his faded jeans.

  He took a long drink from a canteen; when some of the water ran down his body, he casually wiped it off his belly, then returned to work, the long muscles in his back flexing and releasing, again and again, as he pounded the nails with that large, wooden-handled hammer.

  Determined to avoid the sensual pull of that hard mahogany body, Regan sighed and returned to work.

  After turning down dinner invitations from both Dani and Nate—after so many sexual jolts to her system today, she didn’t want to risk being alone with him—Regan spent the evening alone in her suite, trying to create a time-flow chart of Linda Dale’s life in Louisiana.

  Outside the French doors leading out onto a cast-iron-railed balcony, the citizens of Blue Bayou began to get an early start on Fat Tuesday celebrations. Music poured from the bar downstairs, people were literally dancing in the street, and the sound of firecrackers being set off all over town—sounding like random gunshots—made her edgy. Edgy enough that she jumped when the phone rang.

  She picked up the receiver.

  “There’s nothing for you here in Blue Bayou.” The voice was muffled, and so low she couldn’t tell the gender. “You should go back to California where you belong. Before you ruin good people’s lives.”

  “Who is this?” Regan reached for the phone pad, but the dial tone revealed that her caller had hung up.

  “Damn.” She went over to the window and stared down onto the street and the park beyond. Looking for…what? Who?

  The phone rang again. This time, when she grabbed it, she didn’t immediately speak, hoping her caller would say something that would allow her to recognize his voice.

  “Chère?”

  “It’s you.” She let out a deep breath she’d been unaware of holding. “What do you want?”

  “It’ll wait.” Nate’s voice was rich and deep and concerned. It was also not the voice of whoever had called her earlier. “What’s wrong?”

  Her laugh held no humor. “How about what’s right?” She dragged a hand through her hair. “Someone just called me and warned me off the Dale case.”

  “You were threatened?” The sharp tone could have been Finn’s.

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Give me thirty minutes to drop Josh with Jack, and I’ll be there.”

  “That’s not necessary.” That was also so Finn, determined to take control of a situation. “Besides, the boy’s not a puppy. You can’t just keep dumping him on your family.”

  “That’s what family’s for. Not for dumping, but for taking care of one another.”

  She thought about pointing out that Josh no-last-name wasn’t family, then didn’t. “Well, I’m capable of taking care of myself. Besides, I’m exhausted, and I’m going to bed. I’ll be asleep by the time you’d get here.” Actually, she was so revved up from the call, she wasn’t sure she’d get any sleep tonight.

  “I’ll call the state cops.” The fact that he didn’t suggest spending the night in bed with her showed how seriously he was taking the anonymous phone call.

  “You will not. The only way anyone can get up here is with a coded key, which probably makes this suite the safest place in the state, other than the governor’s mansion. I’ll be fine. Besides, I have a gun, remember?”

  “It’s hard to forget when a woman threatens to shoot you.” The edge to his tone was softening. “Maybe we should call Finn. Get a tap on the p
hone.”

  “You’ve been watching too much television. Even if Finn was still FBI, getting a judge to sign off on a wiretap isn’t that easy.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about going through a judge.”

  “That’s illegal.”

  “And your point is? I don’t want anything happening to you, chère.”

  “That’s very sweet, but—”

  “There’s nothin’ sweet about it. You and I have some unfinished business, detective. I want to make sure you stay alive long enough to experience my world-class, mind-blowing, bone-melting lovemaking.”

  She snorted a laugh, her tension finally loosening. “You really are shameless.”

  “You just wait and see,” he promised on a low, sexy rumble. “Dwayne’s on duty tonight, to make sure people don’t start gettin’ a jump on passing too good a time. I’ll have him keep an eye on the inn. Meanwhile, have yourself a nice sleep, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “What’s happening in the morning?”

  “There’s a final meeting of the Mardi Gras dance committee at the courthouse at eleven-thirty. I thought you might want to attend.”

  “Why would I want to do that?” She’d planned to use the time to track down the doctor who’d signed Linda Dale’s death certificate.

  “Maybe ’cause the head of that committee is Toni Melancon?”

  “Charles Melancon’s wife?”

  “Got it in one. She and Charles live with the old lady up at the Melancon plantation. I figured if anything just happened to go wrong with her Jag—”

  “You’re going to screw up her engine?”

  “I wouldn’t even know how to do such a thing, me.”

  “But you’re not above having someone else do it,” she guessed.

  “I think I’m going to have to take the Fifth on that one, detective. But let’s just say that maybe something was to go wrong with that tricky, hand-built British engine, it’d only be gentlemanly for me to offer her a ride home. Havin’ been brought up to be a southern lady with manners, she’s bound to feel obliged to invite me in for a refreshing beverage after that long drive, and bein’ how you just happen to be with me—”