Midnight Bayou

walk.”
    “This isn’t something you walk off or kiss better, Declan. I need to get back.”
    “You’re not driving into town when you’re still churned up. Let’s walk.”
    To ensure she didn’t just drive away when he got out, he took the keys out of the ignition, pocketed them. Then he climbed out, walked around the car. Opening her door, he held out a hand.
    She couldn’t drum up the energy to argue. But instead of taking his hand, she slid out of the car and dipped hers in her pockets.
    They’d walk, she figured. They’d talk. And then, it would be over.
    She imagined he thought his gardens—that new blossoming, the tender fragrances—would soothe her. He would want to comfort. He was built that way. More, he’d want to know so he could find solutions.
    When it came to Lilibeth, there were no solutions.
    “Family can suck, can’t it?”
    Her gaze whipped to his—dark and fierce, and sheened with damp. “She’s not my family.”
    “I get that. But it’s a family situation. We’re always having situations in my family. Probably because there are so many of us.”
    “Not having enough canapés at a cocktail party, or having two aunts show up in the same fancy dress isn’t a situation.”
    He debated whether to let the insult pass. She was, after all, raw and prickly. But he couldn’t quite swallow it.“You figure having money negates personal problems? Takes the sting out of hurts, buries tragedies? That’s pretty shallow, Lena.”
    “I’m a shallow gal. Comes through the blood.”
    “That’s bullshit, but you’re entitled to feel sorry for yourself after almost taking a slap in the face. Money didn’t make my cousin Angie feel much better when her husband got her and his mistress pregnant the same month. It didn’t help my aunt when her daughter died in a car wreck on her eighteenth birthday. Life can fuck you over, whatever your income bracket.”
    She stopped, ordered herself to calm down. “I apologize. She tends to put me in a mood that’s not fit for company.”
    “I’m not company.” Before she could evade, he cupped her face in his hands. “I love you.”
    “Stop it, Declan.”
    “I can’t.”
    “I’m no good for you. No good for anybody, and I don’t want to be.”
    “That’s the key, isn’t it?”
    “Yeah.”
    He reached down, lifted the key she wore around her neck. “It wasn’t a man, but a woman who broke your heart. Now you want to lock it up, close it off so you won’t accept love when it’s offered. Won’t let yourself give it back. Safer that way. If you don’t love, it doesn’t matter if someone walks away. That makes you a coward.”
    “So what if it does?” She shoved his hand aside. “It’s my life. I live it the way I want, and I get along fine. You’re a romantic, cher. Under all that Yankee sense, that expensive education, you’re a dreamer. I don’t put stock in dreams. What is, that’s what counts. One of these days you’re going to wake up and find yourself in this big, old house in the middle of nowhere, wondering what the hell you were thinking. And you’ll hightail it back to Boston,go back to lawyering, marry some classy woman named Alexandra, and have a couple pretty children.”
    “You forgot the pair of golden retrievers,” he said mildly.
    “Oh.” She threw up her hands. “Merde! ”
    “Couldn’t agree more. First, the only woman I know named Alexandra has teeth like a horse. She sort of scares me. Second, and more important, what I’m going to do, Angelina, is live out my life in this big, old house, with you. I’m going to raise a family with you, right here. Golden retrievers are optional.”
    “You saying it, over and over, isn’t going to make it so.”
    Now he grinned, white and wide. “Bet?”
    There was something about him when he was like this, she realized. Something potent and just a little frightening when he wore that sheen of affability over a core of concrete stubbornness.
    “I’m going to work. You just stay away from me for a while, you hear? I’m too irritated to deal with you.”
    He let her walk away. It was enough, for now, that her anger with him had dried up those tears that had glimmered in her eyes.

15
    New Orleans
    1900
    J ulian was drunk, as he preferred to be. He had a half-naked whore in his lap, and her heavy breast cupped in his hand. The old black man played a jumpy tune on the piano, and the sound mixed nicely in his head with wild female laughter.
    Cigar smoke stung