Carolina Moon

processing than his father, and his grandfather, had been willing to do. It made Beaux Reves a self-contained antebellum plantation, and at the same time, a kind of busy, diversified factory.
    And still, with his charts and his science and his careful business plans, he would stand and study the sky and hope nature cooperated.
    In the end, he thought, as he picked up the envelope, it all came down to fate.
    He switched off the desk lamp and used the moonlight spilling through the windows to guide him down the curving stairs and out of the tower office. He’d need those four hours’ sleep, he told himself, because after the morning work he had afternoon meetings at the plant. He reminded himself to pick up some samples for Tory, and work up a proposal.
    If he could pull all that together, he could go see her the next night. As he stepped into his room, he weighed the envelope in his hand, then switched on the light and tucked the envelope into the briefcase that sat beside his field boots.
    He was unbuttoning his shirt when the faint breeze and the drift of smoke it carried had him glancing toward his terrace doors. He stepped over, noted they were open a chink, and through the glass saw the red glow of a burning cigarette.
    “I wondered if you’d ever come down.” Faith turned. She was wearing the robe she favored these days, and spreading her arms on the stone, struck a kind of pose.
    “Why don’t you smoke out your own window?”
    “I don’t have this fine terrace, like the master of the house.” That had been another bone of contention. And though he agreed that she’d have made more of the master suite than he, it hadn’t been worth fighting their mother over her insistence he take it after his father’s death.
    She lifted the cigarette, drew slowly. “You’re still mad at me. I don’t blame you. That was a lousy thing to do. I just don’t think when my temper’s up.”
    “If that’s an apology, fine. Now, go on and let me go to bed.”
    “I’m sleeping with Wade.”
    “Jesus.” Cade pressed his fingers to his eyes and wondered why they didn’t just bore through his brain. “You figure that’s something I need to know?”
    “I found out one of your secrets, so I’m telling you one of mine. We’ll be even.”
    “I’ll make a note to take an ad on it out in the paper. Wade.” He dropped down into the iron chair on the terrace, slumped. “Goddamn it.”
    “Oh, don’t be that way. We’re getting along just fine.”
    “Until you chew him up and spit him out.”
    “I don’t plan to.” Then she gave a short, humorless laugh. “I never plan to, it just happens.” She sent the butt of the cigarette sailing over the rail, never thinking that her mother would find it and be annoyed. “He makes me feel good. Why does something have to be wrong with that?”
    “It doesn’t. It’s your business.”
    “The way you and Tory is yours.” She stepped over, crouched down so their eyes were level. “I am sorry, Cade. It was mean and spiteful of me to say what I did, and I wish I could take it back.”
    “You always do.”
    “No, I might say I do, but half the time I don’t mean it. This time I do.” Since there was more fatigue than anger in his eyes, she reached up to dance her fingers in his hair. She’d always envied the weight and the curl of his hair.
    “But you don’t pay any attention to Mama. She’s got no business telling you what to do. Even if she’s probably right.”
    He caught a drift of his mother’s jasmine, the night bloomer. “She’s not right.”
    “Well, I’m the last one to give advice on romantic entanglements—”
    “Exactly.”
    She arched a brow. “Ouch. That was a quick little stab. But, as I was going to say before I started bleeding, this family is screwed up enough on its own without adding a strange element like Tory Bodeen to the mix.”
    “She’s a part of what happened that night.”
    “Oh Lord, Cade, we were screwed up long before Hope died.”
    He looked so frustrated at that statement, and so tired, she nearly backed off, made some joke out of the whole thing. But she’d been doing a lot of thinking since Tory had come back to town. It was time to say it.
    “You think about it.” Anger with him, and more than a little self-loathing, made her voice sharp as honed tacks. “We were made the minute we were born, all three of us. And Mama and Papa before us. You think their marriage was some sort of love match? You might like to