Or, he said he was.”
“Do you want me to come over? I’m in the city tonight, but—”
“I’m fine.” As a member of the state congress, Drake spent a lot of time in Baton Rouge, had a lot of connections. He kept his parents’ old Georgian in Azalea Bend for his frequent visits to St. Salome Parish. “Maybe you could check out his story. Find out if he’s really with the Granville, Piers and Rousseau firm.”
She didn’t really doubt Cole on that fact, but it seemed wise to check. She couldn’t think of anything else to do and she was grasping at straws. She promised Drake she would call if Cole caused trouble, but she knew she wouldn’t. Drake and Cole had never been friends, and she doubted the passage of time had lessened that tension. As the prosecutor for St. Salome Parish, Drake’s father had handled—or deliberately mishandled, according to Cole—the case against Maurice Louvel, leading to his acquittal for the shooting of Wade Dempsey. Once, years ago, she had confided in Drake about her secret affair with Cole. And the fact that now Drake had let her know about his true feelings for her could only make things worse. She was about to go back to bed when the phone chirped again.
“Bryn, it’s Melodie. I stopped by the Kwik Pak on the way home and ran into Mr. Brouchard. I mentioned Cole Dempsey and he told me who he was. Why didn’t you tell me Cole Dempsey was Wade Dempsey’s son? I’m so sorry! I feel awful about just leaving you there.”
“It’s all right. It’s no big deal.” Maybe if Bryn kept telling people that Cole Dempsey being back in town was no big deal, no one would pay any attention to him. Spin control.
“Do you want me to come back?” Melodie asked. “I could get my things, spend the night.”
“No. I’m fine. Thanks, anyway. You have class in the morning. You don’t need to be way out here.” Melodie attended college part-time in Baton Rouge.
“He’s— Well, he’s not like I expected,” Melodie said.
“What did you expect?” He was everything Bryn had expected and worse.
“I don’t know. He’s so— Gorgeous. Charming. Rich. My God, did you see that Cobra in the drive? I just didn’t expect—I guess I had in mind this hired hand’s son, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, a bad boy.”
“People change,” Bryn said briefly. “Thanks for calling, Melodie, but I’m all right.”
She hung up. The linen-upholstered walls with their hand-stenciled white medallions seemed to close in on her. She tried to sleep, but only tossed and turned. The room felt suffocating, and her mind wouldn’t stop turning. She got up, pulled off her pajamas and put on shorts and a pink hibiscus-colored T-shirt. Silently, she slipped into the hall, padded barefoot down the main stairs—
And slammed straight into a hard shadow at the bottom of the steps. Strong arms grabbed her, held her tight. He smelled like musk and man, and a hopeless need built inside of her.
“Dammit, Bryn, you’ll kill yourself barreling down stairs in the dark like that,” Cole said.
“And you would care.”
She shook him off, trying to ignore the effect his hands had on her body. Her pulse jumped off the scale and she felt as if her heart was in her throat. It was bad enough that he was back—the last thing she could handle was him touching her.
“What are you doing wandering around the house in the night?” she demanded, as if she weren’t doing the same thing.
“I went for a walk down by the river.”
Was he restless, too? Why? She wanted—and didn’t want—to know what he was thinking.
“What are you doing wandering around in the night?” he asked in turn.
She said nothing. In the spectral dark she could see the bright shine of his eyes and something deep inside her quivered when he reached back up and touched her cheek.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Bryn,” he said in a quiet voice. “That’s not why I came to you.”
For some strange reason, the tenderness of his words made her want to cry.
“Then why did you come?” she whispered tautly.
In the teeming silence, she saw something in his eyes shift, heat, and there it was, the inexplicable seductive frisson tugging her toward him just as it had on those long-ago days in the summer shadows of Bellefleur. And she understood why she was suddenly struggling to contain tears. But before he could speak, the screech of a tire from outside pulled her away, then the sound of shattering glass broke the night.
Chapter 3
Something crashed on the floor of the front hall mere feet away, and there was another screeching sound. Bryn’s stomach dipped crazily. She froze for just an instant, her brain computing facts. That sound was a car, and that crash was something thrown through the window. She pushed past the hard shadow of Cole. Her bare feet raced across the wood floor and she flung open the door even as she registered the stab of something sharp and ice-hot.
“Wait, Bryn!” Cole came up behind her, grabbed her as she would have torn outside onto the portico. The half moon that had lit the grounds earlier in the evening hid behind clouds, and beyond the splash of the porch lantern, she could see nothing but impermeable dark.
“Let go of me,” she demanded, fighting Cole’s too-intimate arms plastering her to his too-hard body.
“They’re gone.” He relaxed his hold.
Bryn hit the switch in the entry hall. The overhead chandelier spilled blinding light down on the room. Her breath jammed her throat.
Glass lay everywhere. A rust-red brick sat innocently amongst the shards. It took a beat for her to register the fact that something was tied to it.
She took a step toward it and cried out in pain.
“Bryn!” Cole reached out to her again. As his arms went around her, he felt her trembling.
He knew the last thing she wanted was his help. “I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re hurt.”
“There’s a note.” She started to hobble her way across the glass-littered pine floor, but Cole—wearing shoes—crunched straight for the brick and reached it before her. He knelt and picked it up. A small sheet of white paper was tied to it with a strand of twine.
He ripped it off and opened it. The block-lettered words burned up at him.
The son of a murderer isn’t welcome in St. Salome Parish.
The old bitter fury washed through him, thick and greasy and nauseating.
“What does it say?”
He stood, turned. Bryn’s face was pale, anxious. She was good and freaked-out by what had just happened, and he tamped down his own rage against the past and this town and the injustice he’d waited fifteen years to make right. He handed her the note.
She
