Midnight Bayou

cheekbones. “You gave her money? How could you believe—”
    “First a sheltered wimp, now a moron.” He gave an exaggerated sigh and sipped his tea. “You’re really pumping up the ego here, baby. I didn’t give her a dime, and let her know, clearly, I wasn’t going to be hosed. Thatirritated her into threatening to go to my family. Seems she’s asked around about me and got the picture. She figured they’d be shocked and shamed by the idea of their fair-haired boy falling under your spell. For good measure, she’d tell them I’d fucked her, too.”
    “She could do it.” It was more than the cold now. The sickness roiled in her belly. “Declan, she’s perfectly capable of—”
    “Didn’t I tell you to wait until I was finished?” His voice didn’t whip, didn’t sting. It was simply implacable. “The cost doubled to ten thousand for this spot of blackmail. I don’t think she was pleased with my response. I kicked her out. That’s about it, so you can be outraged now if you want. Don’t cry.” He spoke roughly when her eyes filled. “She’s not worth one tear from you.”
    “I’m mortified. Can’t you understand?”
    “Yes. Though we’re both smart enough to know this had nothing to do with you, I understand. And I’m sorry for it, sorry to add to it.”
    “It’s not you. It’s never been you.” She wiped a tear from her lashes before it could fall. “That’s what I’ve been trying to get through your head from the start.”
    “It’s not you, either, Lena. It’s never been you. I looked at her. I looked close and hard, and there’s nothing there that’s part of you. Family’s the luck of the draw, Lena. What you make of yourself, because of or despite it, that’s where the spine and heart come in.”
    “I’ll never be rid of her, not all the way. No matter what I do.”
    “No, you won’t.”
    “I’m sorry. No, damn it, I will say it,” she snapped when his face tightened. “I’m sorry she came into your home. I’m sorry she touched on your family. I need to ask you not to say anything about this to my grandmama.”
    “Why would I?”
    She nodded, then rising, wandered the room. She loved this place because she’d made it herself. She respected her life for the same reasons. Now, because she cared for, because she respected the man who was so determined to be part of her life, she’d explain.
    “She left me before I was two weeks old,” she began. “Just went out one morning, got in her mama’s car, and drove off. Dumped the car in Baton Rouge. I was three before she came back around.”
    “Your father?”
    She shrugged. “Depends on her mood. Once she told me it was a boy she loved and who loved her, but his parents tore them apart and sent him far away. Another time, she told me she was raped on the way home from school. Still another it was a rich, older man who was going to come back for both of us one day and set us up in a fine house.”
    She turned back so she could face him. “I was about eighteen when I figured she told me the truth. She was high enough, careless enough, mean enough for it to be the truth. How the hell should she know, she said. There were plenty of them. What the hell did she care who planted me in her? One was the same as the other.
    “She was whoring when she got pregnant with me. I heard talk when I was old enough to understand what the talk meant. When she got in trouble, she ran back to my grandparents. She was afraid of an abortion—afraid she’d die of it, then go to hell or some such thing. So she had me, and she left me. Those are the only two things in this world I owe her.”
    She drew a breath, made herself sit again. “Anyway, she came back when I was three, made what would become her usual promises that she’d learned her lesson, she was sorry, she’d changed. She stayed around a few days, then took off again. That’s a pattern that’s repeated since. Sometimes she’d come back beat up from whatever bastard she’d taken up with most recently.Sometimes she’d come back sick, or just high. But Lilibeth, she always comes back.”
    She fell silent, brooding over that single, unavoidable fact.
    “It hurts when she does,” Declan said quietly. “Hurts you, hurts Miss Odette.”
    “She hurts everyone. It’s her only talent. She was high when she showed up on my thirteenth birthday. We were having a fais do-do at the house, all the friends and family, and she stoned, with some lowlife. It got ugly