Two
“Do you have any of those fashion magazines lying around?” Lucas asked Lacey when they were alone in the kitchen.
He’d excused himself from Willa and Lorna so he could follow Lacey inside. He wanted to see for himself that Willa O’Connor was truly a fashion model. Not that he doubted it. She was the perfect example of high fashion. He wanted to be able to stare at her without anyone noticing, and he figured finding a glossy picture of her in a magazine would do the trick until he could figure out how to be around her twenty-four hours a day and still get his work done.
Lacey shot her brother a quizzical look, then grinned. “I see you’ve met Willa.”
Lucas nodded, grabbed a fresh sweet-potato roll, then chewed thoughtfully before answering. “I didn’t just meet her. I saw her standing in the morning mist on the banks of the bayou and lost my heart to her forever.”
Lacey nodded, then went right on placing fresh fruit on a tray for the breakfast guests gathered on the back gallery. “Uh-huh. How many times have I heard you say something such as that, only to find some poor brokenhearted woman at church the next Sunday, glaring at you across the pew because you suddenly found you wanted to keep your fickle heart intact, after all?”
“Ouch, that hurts. You’re cruel, Lacey, love. Very cruel.”
“And you wouldn’t know real love if it bit you on your adorable nose,” his older sister countered as she headed out the open French doors. Then she turned to face him, all seriousness and as prim and proper as ever in her pearls and lace. “Lucas, be careful with this one, will you please? From what Lorna’s told me, Willa O’Connor is dealing with some major issues right now. She doesn’t need you pestering her with one of your obsessive but rather short-lived infatuations.”
Lucas didn’t answer her. He stood, leaning against the counter, his eyes scanning the small crowd to make sure the object of this discussion was still chatting with Lorna and Mick. And wondered what issues lay behind Willa’s incredible blue-eyed million-dollar smile.
But Lacey wasn’t finished. “Besides, I don’t think Willa is the type to fall for your irresistible charms. She’s way too smart for the likes of you. She went to school at some fancy college up north, graduated with honors.”
Leave it to Lacey to drop a zinger like that with a sweet, serene smile plastered across her classic face. Lucas let out an aggravated sigh as he watched his sister play hostess with all the ingrained manners of a true Southern lady. And wished he could do something really childish like put a lizard down her starched collar.
“Do you have a magazine?” he asked Rosie Lee Babineaux, their longtime housekeeper and cook, as she passed him on her way to the industrial-size refrigerator.
“Lucas, Lucas,” Rosie Lee replied, laughing so hard her shoulders shook. “You need to put your eyeballs back in your head, hein?”
“Am I that obvious?”
“You got the look,” Rosie Lee told him, wagging a finger at him, her Cajun accent twice as distinctive as his.
“And what look would that be, chère?”
“That Lucas look,” Rosie Lee explained, rolling her eyes. “The one you get whenever a pretty woman is anywhere within five miles of you.”
Lucas knew she was right. But, hey, he was having fun with it, so why couldn’t everyone lay off? “I just want to investigate things a bit further,” he explained. “Maybe hang a picture of her near my pillow, so I can gaze at her with adoration….”
Rosie Lee’s burst of laughter stopped him. She had to wipe her eyes, but she lifted a hand toward a set of swinging doors. “I think Em left a few fancy magazines in our sitting room. Go see.”
Lucas took off like a rocket, heading into the small family room tucked off the kitchen, a place where he’d spent many happy hours with the Babineaux clan since he’d arrived, nine years old and scared to death, at Bayou le Jardin. Falling across a worn plaid couch that had been salvaged and cleaned since the spring floods, he remembered feeling safe here in this little room that had at one time been servants’ quarters. He’d naturally blended right in with the six Babineaux children. To the point that they’d included him as one of their own—just like another son, even though he was a few years older than their four boys and two girls.
Glancing around, Lucas remembered Tobias Babineaux, or Big Tobbie, as everyone called him, teaching him all about the dark, mysterious swamp waters that ran behind the grounds of Bayou le Jardin. Tobbie had taken Lucas under his wing, teaching him how to hunt and fish and track, teaching him how to show respect to Mother Nature and how to stand up for what he believed in, teaching him how to survive.
And Lucas had drunk it all in, wanting very much to survive, but always, always challenging life in the midst of learning his lessons well.
A daredevil. That’s what they’d called him.
Reckless. Juvenile. Too full of life for his own good. That’s what he’d always heard about himself.
Too full of life. So full of life that he dared anyone or anything to change that fact.
Even God.
And because of that reckless, careless streak, Lucas had come close, so close to getting into serious trouble over the years, that he’d reached the point where everyone just left him to it—as if they’d all given up on changing him.
But that didn’t stop his loving sisters from reminding him on a daily basis of his shortcomings.
“Why start worrying about that now?” he said with a shrug as he looked around for the much-coveted magazine. Right now, he wouldn’t dwell on how lousy he’d felt since the spring night all those months ago when he’d left Lorna alone in the mansion, in the dark.
He wouldn’t stop to think about what she must have suffered before Mick had found her there. And saved her from herself.
“It should have been me,” Lucas said as he reached into a cabinet and grabbed a handful of tattered fashion magazines.
But then again, Lucas knew in his heart it had to be Mick. Mick Love had fallen in love with his sister in spite of her fears and her self-doubts. And Lucas had accepted that, welcomed it. It was only fitting that Mick be the one to come to Lorna’s aid, to bring her such strength in her faith and herself again. But still…Lucas couldn’t get past that night.
And the promise he had made to his sisters so long ago, on another dark, storm-tossed night.
“Did you find it?”
Lucas looked up to see Rosie Lee’s round, olive-skinned face smiling at him, her long black, silver-streaked braid swinging over one shoulder. “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked, a teasing light in her dark eyes.
“I hope so,” Lucas said, winking at her as he made a point of lazily flipping through the pages of a thick magazine. Then more to himself than her, he repeated his wish. “I certainly hope so.”
“So, now you’ve heard all the news about us,” Lorna said to Willa. “It’s your turn.”
Willa sank back against the soft floral cushions of her chair, a fork in one hand while she pretended to
