she said.
“I never said that.”
“You said she’d make trouble in the end. That sounded pretty much as if you didn’t think she should have come here.”
Had he said that? “I don’t think that was exactly what I said, but if you want me to take it back, I will. She’s been here awhile now and she hasn’t hurt you so far as I can tell.”
“Having her show up was a shock.” Jilly rested her forehead on his chest. “I’m still getting used to her. She’s not what this is about. Forgive me for being a whiny wuss, but I’m worried about something.” Guy looked down at the top of her head, at her thick, blond-streaked brown hair that reached her waist. A yellow ribbon, tied a few inches from the bottom, kept it behind her shoulders. That had been his old partner, Nat Archer, on the phone. Before long he would show up here, even though Guy had warned him previously that he didn’t want them seen together in Toussaint. From the sound of Nat’s voice, something big was going down. Ozaire was already backing a truck out and would be on his way back to St. Cécil’s within moments. Jilly ought to be gone before Nat arrived, too.
A half-grown black mutt with legs too long for its body ran back and forth and Guy made a note to call for the dogcatcher when Jilly left.
Jilly looked up at him. “I said I was worried.”
“And I’m waitin’ to hear why.”
“You are so tough, Guy Gautreaux. You never give an inch and you’re the only person I have to share this with.”
“You have Joe. I’d have thought your brother would have the best insight on this one.”
Hurt, disappointed, she tried to shrug away, but he exerted a little more pressure on her shoulder and she couldn’t go anywhere. “Joe isn’t objective about this. He hates Edith. He isn’t into giving people second chances. But then, he’s my half brother. Edith isn’t his mother.”
“Joe Gable has his head screwed on right.”
“Damn it, Guy.” She punched his unyielding chest. “I think you’d side with anyone but me.”
He shook her gently. “Could it be that Joe and I have your best interests at heart? Could that be it? Joe might remember picking you up when your dad was long gone, who the hell knows where, and the people he hired on the cheap to look after you kicked you out because he’d quit sendin’ money. You were fourteen years old. Joe might harbor a grudge against the so-called mother who walked out and left you with that angry son of a gun who fathered you and left you just like she did.”
“Yes,” she said. “That could be. Sorry I bothered you. Joe and Ellie won’t be back from Italy for weeks, anyway. Forget it. It’s no big deal.” Except that she felt she could choke, and wished her brother and his wife weren’t so far away.
Yes, it was a big deal. He could feel that it, whatever it was, could be a very big deal. “I’ve got a clumsy mouth, you know that? When it comes to your old man, I’d gladly help Joe feed him to a gator.”
The suspicious sheen on her light hazel eyes turned his stomach. If she cried, he was a goner.
“I want to hear what you came to say and you aren’t leavin’ till you tell me,” he said in a hurry.
Jilly met those black eyes of his and he made a valiant attempt to give her a reassuring smile. “Okay,” she said. “No, it isn’t okay. It’s going to sound stupid. Forget it.”
He put his mouth by her ear. “Listen to me carefully. You and I will stand right here until you come clean.” He was starting to get a really nasty feeling that this could chew up some time and prayed Nat would take longer than expected to arrive.
“You know there’s a live-in staff at Edwards Place?” she said.
“Only because you told me. I haven’t been invited to tea yet.”
She looked at him sideways. “There’s a new man who came from New Orleans a couple of days ago. I think he’s a bodyguard.”
He didn’t know how he felt about that—if he felt anything at all. “Edith and that woman who came with her are pretty much alone. Could be they feel safer with a man watching out for them.”
“When this one arrived—he came in on the chop-per—I think Edith was as surprised as I was. That he was there, I mean. She knew him, even though they didn’t say much to each other. He just went to a room as if he knew it was going to be there, and moved in.” There was no reason to mention that Edith’s daughter-in-law, Laura Preston, threw a tantrum at the sight of the man.
“Mr. Preston flew in, too,” Jilly went on. “I was glad to meet him finally.”
“Is that right?” All of Guy’s nightmares were coming true. The so-called happy family wanted to draw Jilly in, to change her.
“Yes. He’s a nice man. He couldn’t have been kinder to me. He said he hoped I’d let him think of me as the daughter he never had.”
“Did he?” Guy had turned ice cold. Goose bumps shot up his arms. “Is he staying at the house now?”
“He had to go back to New Orleans, but he said he’ll be spending a lot of time here. I can’t get used to the idea of someone having a helicopter pad in their garden.” She held out her left arm to show him a thick gold bracelet with a diamond clasp. “I feel funny about it, but he gave me this. He gave one each to Edith and Laura, too.”
Guy felt his nostrils flare. Every alarm bell went off. What could this guy possibly want from Jilly?
“Very nice,” he said. “But the bodyguard stayed?”
“Yes. Daddy Preston went back alone.”
Had he misheard her? “What did you call him?”
She reddened. “That’s what everyone calls him. At least, Edith and Laura do.”
“So you call him what? Daddy?”
“No. I wouldn’t be comfortable—even though he did ask me to. I call him Mr. Preston.”
If he had the right, he’d tell Jilly to stay away from that place. He didn’t have the right and wasn’t likely to. “You were talking about the new bodyguard. Did he seem threatening to you?”
“No-o. Not at first.”
He gripped both of her arms. “Explain that.”
“I think I was followed back to my place last night. It was getting dark but when I got out of my car in the driveway, a car drove by slowly.”
“And you believe this was the same man who just moved into Edwards Place?”
She hadn’t been able to see his face, just that he was big. “I don’t think so. But the car had those black windows.”
If he showed any sign of the sudden panic he felt, she’d be terrified. “That doesn’t mean it had anything to do with you, then.”
“When I was inside,
