part-grown black mutt with long, silky hair loped around his legs but soon left to investigate Jilly.
“You say that every time I come,” Jilly pointed out, scratching the dog’s velvet head. “Who’s this good-looking fella?”
“That Guy Gautreaux’s a big, black cloud all the time, that’s why I say it.” Ozaire looked smug. His scalp shone in the sunlight and sweat ran down the sides of his round face and heavy neck. “Never got nuthin’ good to say. I reckon he’s got a curse on him. Bad-luck boy, that one.”
“You should be more careful what you say, you,” Jilly told Ozaire. “A man could get in trouble for saying things like that.”
“Get on. I’m just sayin’ it like it is. Last woman that boy got close to is in a cemetery.”
Last year Guy’s longtime girlfriend had been murdered in New Orleans. He blamed himself.
“Later,” Jilly said, exasperated. She held out the boxes. “We had extra at the bakery. They’re fresh. Put them in the store case for Homer to sell.”
Ozaire took the load from her and gave a rare grin. “An’ I thought you was bringin’ me a treat.”
Jilly wagged a finger at him. A bug flew into her eye and she dealt with it, then pointed at him again. “You get one. I’ve counted those pastries, I’ll count them again when I come back up. There better be no more than one gone.” Give the man the chance and he’d be hauling the stuff off to sell to whoever was using the church hall at St. Cécil’s.
“That there’s a dog what’s a prize, that’s what he is,” Ozaire said, as if the topic had never been pastries. “Can’t keep ’im, no sir. My Lil says four dogs is enough. But this guy’s too good, got too much character to drop him at the pound and have ’em put him down in a couple of days.”
Jilly had been the recipient of Ozaire’s earlier attempts to place strays. “Hope you find a home for him,” she said. The man’s love of dogs made her feel more kindly toward him.
“Reckon I have,” Ozaire said. “With your prickly friend, huh? Put in a good word, huh? For the dog’s sake, and for that miserable son of…” He let the rest trail off.
Jilly shook her head. “You’re too hard on Guy,” she told him, and headed toward the dock. She turned and walked backward a few paces. “I’m going to check on the pastries, mind.”
Jilly hurried downhill.
Guy was leaning over, pushing off one of the rental boats. A couple of guys with fishing gear started the outboard and phut-phutted into the middle of the channel. With the phone still clamped to his ear, Guy stood up and saw Jilly. He gave her a brief wave and started meandering back along the dock. They’d met the previous year when an investigation brought him to Toussaint and he’d become her friend, her best buddy, and she needed to talk openly with him about what was on her mind. He had never attempted to turn their relationship into something deeper, but Jilly had seen the hot looks he quickly hid—she wasn’t the only one frustrated by the sexless hours they spent together.
“Take your sweet time,” Jilly muttered. How could a man walk that slowly? “Just let me squirm as long as possible.” Do I admit I’m scared and I need to tell you about it? If she did, he’d probably jump all over her, say she was putting herself in danger. Get out of the situation. End of discussion.
Guy stood still, staring up at her, and continued his conversation. After the death of the woman he had loved he refused to go back to the NOPD, but they were holding a place for him. Guy was a darn good detective. Meanwhile, Homer had needed someone reliable and asked Guy if he’d work at his place—just to fill the time until he moved on. Guy accepted the job and gave it his all. He seemed grateful to Homer and treated his own place at the station as a trust, even though Jilly knew he had enough money to live on if he wanted to hang around his rented house and do nothing until he decided on his next steps.
Jilly didn’t want Guy to leave his haven in Toussaint, even though he had made it plain he didn’t intend to stay for good.
He stuck the phone back on his belt and speeded up. A tall, rangy man, in faded-out jeans and a navy T-shirt with holes in it, he could cover the ground quickly when it suited him. He met Jilly before she could put a foot on the dock.
She looked up at him, at his unreadable, almost black eyes, and wished she hadn’t come. Ozaire hadn’t been joking about the cloud.
“I wasn’t expectin’ you,” he said, and winced. He almost always said the wrong thing to Jilly, but not because he didn’t want to tell her how he felt each time he saw her. He guessed he’d never be polished.
“I’m not staying,” Jilly said. Not when he looked as if he wished she was somewhere else and couldn’t even manage to crack a welcoming smile.
He cocked his head to one side and took off his straw Stetson, then held it by the fraying brim. “You must have had somethin’ on your mind,” he said. “No reason to come this way otherwise.” And he wished she’d say something he’d really like to hear, like her creep of a mother had packed up and left town again.
“You can make a person feel pretty unwelcome, Guy.” She didn’t dare say it hurt her when he behaved as if she was a stranger with bad timing.
He ran a deeply tanned forearm over his brow, blinking slowly.
You got used to a man’s little mannerisms, got to like them even. Next he’d rake his fingers through his dish-water-blond hair. Yep, that’s what he did.
“Guy, can I ask your honest opinion about something?”
He swallowed and rubbed the flat of his right hand back and forth on his chest. Jilly, you can ask me anything. If I was any kind of a man, I’d get over what I can’t change and find a way to be what you need, what you want me to be. “Ask. Maybe I can be useful—maybe not.” He sickened himself. She wanted intimacy with him, the kind that never let her doubt he was on her side. But he was scared to give it to her. Stuff had happened, deadly stuff, to the only woman he’d gotten really close to.
Yeah, Jilly thought, she just wanted him to reassure her that she shouldn’t question her mother’s motives for being back in Toussaint. And she’d like him to put her mind at rest about one or two things that made her antsy when she visited the old Edwards Place, where her mother’s second husband, Daddy Preston, had set his wife up in lavish style. She’d dissuaded Edith from renaming the estate, so Edwards Place it remained, but Jilly didn’t like the house much. Too big and eerie, filled with memories and sad stories Edith insisted on relating.
Then there was what happened last night. Guy could help her get through that if he had a mind to. All he had to do was tell her it was no big deal, and that he was on her side.
Jilly gave Guy a little smile, then dropped her face so he couldn’t study her so closely anymore.
Would it be so dangerous to give her a hug? he wondered. A brotherly hug to take away some of the trouble he had seen in her eyes? He wasn’t the only one who had suffered loss. Jilly’s former fiancé turned out to be a felon and was destined to spend the rest of his life in the pen.
Jilly moved closer. She could feel him, always could when he was anywhere around.
“Okay,” he said, and put a hand on
