Magnolia Moon

by JoAnn Ross

  “She was my aunt, wasn’t she?”

  He nodded. “Karen Hart was your birth mother. She’d married your father while they were both in law school, and they had plans to go into practice together. He drew a bad lottery number, so since it was obvious he was going to get drafted, he enlisted in the marines. While he was in Vietnam, he discovered he liked being military police and decided he’d go into law enforcement when he got out, which wasn’t what he and Karen had agreed upon.

  “Shortly after she’d filed for divorce, she discovered she was pregnant. She was going to get an abortion when Linda talked her into going through with the pregnancy and giving the baby—you—to her.” This time his faint, reminiscent smile touched his eyes. “Karen wasn’t the only tough-minded sister. In her own way, Linda could be very persuasive. And she knew what she wanted—which was you. She was also a natural-born mother. I don’t think she was ever happier than during those years with you.”

  That was something, at least, Regan thought, trying to find some silver lining.

  “I called Karen to tell her what had happened,” he continued, answering a question that had been niggling at Regan: how Karen Hart could have known about her sister’s death when Nate’s father hadn’t been able to locate her. “She came to get you. I asked if I could stay in touch, since we’d gotten close and I knew you’d miss the woman who’d been the only mother you knew. I never knew if Karen didn’t believe the story of Linda’s suicide and perhaps didn’t trust me, but she said she didn’t want to confuse you about who you were. She also warned me that if I ever tried to contact you, she’d do everything she could legally to ruin not just my reputation and my business, but my life as well. I believed her.”

  As did Regan.

  “But the real reason I allowed her to have her way was because I thought perhaps she was right about it being better if you never knew about the circumstances surrounding the first two years of your life.”

  He heaved out a long breath, as if relieved to finally get the secret out in the open. “I realize this has all come as a shock,” he said, proving himself the master of the understatement. “But I’m going to say the same thing to you I did to Karen. I’d like to stay in touch. If you think that might be possible.”

  “I don’t know.” Regan was not going to lie. “I have to sort things out in my own mind.”

  He nodded gravely. “I can understand that.” He stood up. “I’d better go retrieve Mother and take her home.”

  There was no statute of limitation on murder, and while it might have been an accident, the woman lying upstairs had taken a life. Even knowing that, Regan didn’t make a move to stop him as he left the room.

  Regan was extremely grateful when Nate didn’t talk on the drive back to the inn. She felt too drained for conversation.

  A little more than an hour after Bethany Melancon’s attack, they were back in the suite.

  “Well,” she said on a long sigh. “I was thinking earlier that I’d never forget this day. Charles Melancon and his mother certainly made sure of that.”

  “Helluva story,” he said.

  “No kidding.”

  “What are you going to do next?”

  “I can’t see that there is much to do. There’s no point in trying to open an investigation. Mrs. Melancon’s obviously not capable of presenting a defense, and Caledonia’s an old woman who doesn’t need to be hit with an accessory murder charge.”

  “Linda must’ve been a really special person,” Nate offered. “Taking on her sister’s baby that way.”

  “Yes.” Regan sighed again, weary from the strange emotional roller coaster. “She must have been. I suppose I have to give my mother credit for having carried me, when she certainly didn’t have to.”

  “I am certainly grateful for that.” Regan seemed to be doing remarkably well with all this. Then again, his detective was a remarkable woman. “I feel guilty about having opened this can of worms,” he said carefully, trying to find a way to say the words he’d never thought he’d want to say to any woman.

  “I’m fine.”

  He doubted that was precisely the case yet, but she would be. He knew that.

  “It occurred to me,” he said with as much casualness as he could muster, “sometime between when you were being held hostage and tonight’s party, that the thing to do would be to spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”

  He felt her stiffen in his arms. Not a good sign.

  “Oh, Nate.” She dragged a hand through her hair.

  Damn. Definitely not a good sign.

  “I love you, Regan.”

  “You can’t.”

  That was certainly definitive. “Of course I can. I was going to tell you earlier this evening, but then things got a little crazy.”

  “That’s certainly an understatement.” She shook her head and looked out over the moon-gilded bayou. “There’s a full moon.”

  “It’s real pretty.”

  “It is. But everyone knows people behave differently during full moons. I’ve learned never to schedule weekends off then, because homicides always increase, and heaven knows, when I was a patrol cop—”

  “What I’m feeling isn’t related to any full moon.” Wishing she seemed a little happier about his declaration, he took her distressed face between his hands. “I love you, Regan. And I want to marry you.” There. He’d said the M word and survived. In fact, hearing it out loud sounded amazingly cool.

  “It’s too soon.”

  “Okay.” He could live with that. “I understand that women like long engagements so they have enough time to plan a big blowout wedding, and while I’m really looking forward to our honeymoon—Jack recommends Kauai, by the way, since he and Dani had such a good time there—I’m open to anything your little heart desires—”

  “Nate.” It was her turn to interrupt him. “I’m not talking about needing time to make wedding plans. It’s too soon to fall in love.”

  “Well, now, I would have thought the same thing myself, once upon a time. But since meeting you, I’ve decided that love sort of makes its own time. When it’s right, it’s right.” He brushed his knuckles up her cheek. Threaded his fingers through her hair. “And this is right.”

  “It’s lust.”

  “That, too,” he allowed. “But I think that’s a plus, don’t you? That I know I’ll still want you when we’re old and gray, and we’re watching our grandbabies—”

  “Grandbabies?”

  “I sorta like the idea. But if you don’t want kids, Regan, I’m okay with that.” The idea of a houseful of little girls who looked just like Regan and who’d dress up their Barbie dolls in police blues and have them arrest Ken was surprisingly appealing, but Nate figured he’d have plenty of time to convince her.

  “It’s too soon to be talking about this,” she insisted. “We haven’t known each other long enough to even be thinking about marriage. We both have our own lives, our own work—”

  “They don’t need contractors in California?”

  “What?”

  “Relocating for the woman you love is kind of a family tradition.” He was winging it here, but surprisingly, he figured he could handle Los Angeles if he had to. For Regan. “My dad moved here from Chicago for Maman. Finn moved to California for Julia. And I’m willing to relocate if you want to keep detectin’ in L.A.”

  She was staring at him as if he’d just suggested they become a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde and start robbing banks for a living.

  “Besides,” he said, realizing that he ought to let her know what other changes he was planning to make to his life, “Josh might get a kick out of surfing in the Pacific Ocean.”

  “You’re going to adopt him?”

  “Yeah, I thought I would. But I’m not askin’ you to marry me to find him a mother, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “No.” She waved away his suggestion. “Of course I wouldn’t think that.” Things were definitely on a downhill slide here. “I think you
’re making a good decision, where Josh is concerned.”

  “Thank you,” he said dryly.

  “Even if it is a bit impetuous.”

  “That’s me. Mr. Impetuosity.”

  He figured it sounded better than Peter Pan, and while there were a lot of things he was willing to try to change for Regan, Nate knew it’d be useless to attempt to change his nature. Which had him belatedly realizing that he never should have expected her to fall into his arms and tearfully accept his out-of-the-blue proposal. She’d already told him she wasn’t a go-with-the-flow type of person. The gods, who obviously had one helluva sense of humor, must be laughing their heads off at having fixed things so he’d fall in love with a female version of Finn Callahan.

  “I don’t even know who I am,” she murmured, looking away again.

  “Of course you do. You’re the same person you’ve always been. Your family situation might have been a little screwed up, but if you want an old-fashioned kind of family, you’ve got one waiting for you.” He held out his arms. “The Callahan clan might seem big to someone who grew up pretty much all alone, but we’ve always got room for one more.

  “Look, chère.” When he saw a sheen of moisture that hadn’t been in her eyes the entire time she’d been learning the truth about her past, Nate was sorely tempted to pull her into his arms and kiss her doubts away. “I’m glad to give you some time to make up your mind, but there’s something you need to know. When I found out you were in that courthouse with Mike, and realized I could lose you, it dawned on me that part of the reason I’ve spent my entire life dodging serious relationships is because I lost two of the people I loved most, and I didn’t want to take the risk of getting emotionally hammered again.

  “Now, I’m not going to beat myself up about that, since I’ve never—ever—met a woman I wanted to spend all that much time with, anyway. Until you. I love you, Regan. Enough to risk someday goin’ through the pain of losing you, because the alternative is not having you in my life at all. And that flat-out isn’t acceptable.”

  “Dammit, Callahan.” A tear escaped to trail down her cheek. He brushed it away with the pad of his thumb. “When you said I was an Acorn kind of silverware woman, you said I was like your mother. But that’s wishful thinking. To hear Dani tell it, she was a cross between Donna Reed and Mother Teresa. I’m nothing like either one of them.”

  “I think you may be a bit off the mark about that, but I don’t want Donna Reed or Mother Teresa. I want you. What you have in common with Maman is that you’re willing to take risks, that you’re brave enough to trust your instincts, even when they might go against the norm. I can’t imagine it was easy for her to go to college, back in a time when folks around here tended to think people who went to college were lazy and just didn’t want to work, since an education wasn’t going to help you on the farm or in the sugar refinery. Or help you raise up your babies, which is pretty much what women were expected to do.

  “But she did go to college. Not only that, she broke family tradition and ventured north across the Mason-Dixon line. Then to top it all off, she up and married herself a Yankee, which certainly set tongues a-buzzin’. But you know what?”

  “What?”

  “She didn’t care. Because she trusted herself. And she trusted my dad. And never, not once, tried to change him.”

  “That’s just as well. Since it’s impossible to really change a person.”

  “True. Which is another reason why I know we belong together. You’ve never once mentioned changin’ me.”

  “Why would I?”

  “I have no idea. Bein’ how I’m pretty damn close to perfect.” He grinned to lighten the mood a bit. “But every woman I’ve ever met starts gettin’ the urge to change me.”

  “Which isn’t going to happen.” She’d never met a man more comfortable in his own skin. “And I’d never want to change you.”

  “See? We’re perfect for each other. You’re smart, and strong, and brave, and honest—”

  “Now you’re making me sound like a Boy Scout.”

  “You interrupted me before I got to the good parts.” He laced his fingers through her hair, pushing it back from her face. “You’re also gorgeous, sexy as all get-out, and I can’t get within twenty feet of you without wanting to do this.”

  Partly because he couldn’t resist those tempting, sweet lips another moment, partly because he wanted to leave her with something to remember, Nate bent his head and gave her a long, deep kiss that left them both breathless.

  “I don’t supposed you’d be willing to run off and marry me right now?”

  “Of course not.”

  He hadn’t thought so, but it’d been worth a shot. “Okay. See you around, sugar.” If he didn’t leave now, he never would, and Nate knew it’d be a huge mistake to risk her someday feeling that he’d pressured her into spending the next sixty years with him. “Give me a call when you make a decision.”

  Ignoring the shock on her lovely face was the second hardest thing he’d ever done. Getting up and walking out of the suite was the hardest.

  “Nate?”

  He paused in the doorway. Closed his eyes. Braced himself. Then slowly turned around. “Change your mind already?” he asked pleasantly.

  “I want to donate the proceeds from the petroleum stock to charity. I thought you might be able to suggest some local ones.”

  Stifling a sigh, Nate reminded himself that he shouldn’t have expected an instantaneous one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turnaround. “I’ll send you a list. In L.A.”

  “Thank you.” She did not, he noted, reject the notion of returning to California.

  “C’est rien. Speaking as the mayor, I can assure you that the town’ll be real grateful.”

  He left without looking back. And reluctantly prepared himself for a long, lonely wait.

  Nothing was the same. Her job, which she’d already begun to find frustrating, grew more so every day. There was nothing wrong with her new partner, who’d transferred in from Narcotics, but he wasn’t Van.

  She’d always liked California, but the view of the swimming pool from her apartment window couldn’t live up to herons nesting on the bayou, and the constant sun, which was such a part of the Los Angeles lifestyle, now seemed too predictable.

  She’d received a letter from Charles Melancon, and on impulse called him back. She wasn’t certain that she’d ever think of him as a surrogate father, but she thought they might be able to be become friends one day.

  Other than a polite official letter written on Office of the Mayor stationery, thanking her for her generous contribution to various local charities, she hadn’t heard from Nate. She might have thought he’d written her off and moved on had she not received a pager message from Dani a week after her return to L.A., suggesting she might want to call Nate.

  The cop in her instantly feared for the worst, and she immediately called, only to get his answering machine.

  “Hi. Josh and I are at baseball practice. If you’re calling about a booth at the Cajun Days festival, call Jewel Breaux at 504-555-1112, and she’ll be glad to take your reservation. If you’re calling about the upcoming parish council meeting, it’s Monday night at seven-thirty. Give or take a few minutes. We’ll be voting on what color to repaint the bleachers at the Buccaneer baseball park. If you want some construction work done, leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. And if this is Regan calling…I still love you, chère.”

  Regan’s heart was thrumming a thousand miles an hour with anticipation as the pirogue wove through mist-draped black waters.

  “I really appreciate this,” she told Jack. It was a month since Mardi Gras. After having discovered a recent tropical storm had temporarily turned the road to Nate’s house back to water, she’d been afraid she wouldn’t be able to pull off her surprise.

  Jack’s grin flashed white in the moon-spangled darkness. “It’s easy enough for someone who’s lived their entire life in this bayou to get lost at
night. If you got lost, it could take the search-and-rescue squad until morning to find you. Which would give you the chance to change your mind ’bout marrying my little brother.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind.”

  “I’m real pleased to here that, chère. Since Nate isn’t, either.”

  “I know.” She’d been calling him every day, choosing times she guessed he’d be working. While the answering machine message changed every day, the closing line had remained the same. The idea still amazed her—delighted her. She finally realized that he’d been right. She’d been falling in love with him from the beginning—if not when he’d shown up at the station, at least from that night they’d rescued Josh together.

  Time didn’t really matter at all. Except for the fact she’d already wasted thirty long days and nights they could have been together. It was past time to put her heart before her head.

  “It’s also very nice of you and Dani to take Josh for the weekend.”

  “The three of you have a real good start on a nice little family.” The house came into view as they came around a corner. Jack cut the electric engine and drifted toward the dock. “But sometimes a man and woman just gotta have themselves some privacy.”

  A welcoming yellow light shone from the windows. For the first time in her life, Regan understood the concept of coming home.

  “I don’t ’magine you’ve ever been to a Cajun wedding?” Jack asked as he tied up the boat.

  “No, I haven’t.” The idea of any wedding was still more terrifying than facing down an urban riot. “I was thinking of something quiet. Maybe just for family and a few close friends.”

  His rich, bold laugh startled a trio of herons nesting in the reeds. They took to the night sky, wings silhouetted against the full white moon. “There’s no such thing as a quiet Cajun wedding. The womenfolk have been planning the festivities for weeks.”

  “They were that sure I’d cave in?”

  “We were all that sure the two of you belonged together.” He retrieved her spruce green canvas carry-on from the bottom of the pirogue. “You sure you don’t need me to carry that for you?”