Something awful had happened—to her.

Someone had hurt her. And they would pay.

Jack caught her by the arms, holding her still against her struggles.

“Look at me,” he said, trying to keep his voice soft and gentle, although inside he felt like bellowing with rage—not at her, but at whomever had caused her to be so hurt and scared.

Fear clouded her face, her breath coming in little sobs, then she strained against his grip. “Let me go,” she said in a quiet, pleading voice.

It took all the willpower he had not to shake her and yell, “It’s Jack. Please. I didn’t do this!” “Cara, it’s me,” he said softly.

“J-Jack?” she stammered. “Jack? Oh …”

She reached for him, and he pulled her close with a sharp inhalation that he would never admit was a sob. “Cara, Cara, shh,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m here. It’s me. Don’t be afraid.”

Blood Ties in

Chef Voleur

Mallory Kane

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MALLORY KANE has two very good reasons for loving reading and writing. Her mother was a librarian, and taught her to love and respect books as a precious resource. Her father could hold listeners spellbound for hours with his stories. He was always her biggest fan.

She loves romantic suspense with dangerous heroes and dauntless heroines, and enjoys tossing in a bit of her medical knowledge for an extra dose of intrigue. After twenty-five books published, Mallory is still amazed and thrilled that she actually gets to make up stories for a living.

Mallory lives in Tennessee with her computer-genius husband and three exceptionally intelligent cats. She enjoys hearing from readers. You can write her at mallory@mallorykane.com.

For my family. Blood ties and love together are the strongest. Thank you all. I love you.

And for fans of The Delancey Dynasty.

Your loyalty and love for the Delanceys overwhelms me. Thank you.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Jack Bush looked at his wife of one month as she lifted her arms above her head to slip on the exquisite pink dress. It slid down over her breasts, past her waist and hips, draping over her slender curves and porcelain skin, and flowed like a thick gleaming river past her ankles to puddle just slightly on the floor.

He tried to swallow but his throat was dry. He felt himself becoming aroused as her palms smoothed the satin. He stepped behind her and rested his hands on top of hers at the curve of her hips.

“Jack, I have to finish dressing.”

“I know,” he murmured as he kissed the little bump at the curve of her shoulder. He pushed the dainty strap away and slid his lips and tongue across to the curve of her neck, feeling triumphant when she took a long breath and angled her head to give him access.

“Isn’t it fashionable to be late?” he asked.

“Not when the party’s for us and it’s at my mother’s house.”

“Ouch,” he said. “Way to deflate the, um...enthusiasm.”

Cara Lynn Delancey laughed and turned to him. She slid the strap back up onto her shoulder, pushed her fingers through her hair and shook it out, then she pulled her dress up and hooked her thumbs over the elastic band of her silk bikini panties, pushed them down and kicked them off. “I’m ready,” she said.

Jack stared at her open-mouthed. “You’re not really... Really? At your mother’s house?”

Her face was still creased with laughter, but two bright red spots stood out in her cheeks, revealing her embarrassment. “Haven’t you been telling me I need to be less inhibited?”

He did his best to tamp down his desire by picturing her in baggy jeans and a stretched-out T-shirt, bent over her loom in her studio. That didn’t help. She was sexy as hell in an oversize T-shirt, too.

He shook his head. “Okay. Let’s go. But God help you if somebody steps on your dress, because those little straps will never hold up.”

She shot him a worried look, then started toward the panties. Jack grabbed her hand. “We’re late,” he said with a meaningful look.

“Right,” she said, sending a regretful glance back at the panties.

* * *

JACK COULDN’T BELIEVE his plan had worked. He was here, standing in the gigantic front hall of the Delancey family home, as an invited guest. No, he amended. Not as a guest—as family.

He’d done it. He’d married Cara Lynn Delancey, and now he was about to meet the majority of the Delancey family for the first time, all in one place. So far, he’d only met her parents, one of her brothers and a cousin since he’d eloped with Cara Lynn a month before.

Tonight, all the names in his grandfather’s letters were about to be attached to real people, and one of those people held the answers he needed. Someone in this room knew what really happened the night Con Delancey was murdered twenty-eight years ago at his fishing cabin on Lake Pontchartrain.

Jack looked around, trying to appear worldly and unimpressed, while inside he felt like a kid at Christmas. He was here, finally, surrounded by the infamous politician’s children and grandchildren. This was better than his wildest dream.

Cara Lynn appeared beside him, slipping her hand into his and squeezing. Gritting his teeth, he tried to keep his expression pleasant as he did his best to ignore the soft warmth of her fingers tightening around his in nervous anticipation.

That was the hardest part of being around Cara Lynn—maintaining the delicate balance between appearing to be the loving bridegroom, totally in love with his beautiful wife, and his true mission.

“Jack, remember I told you about my great-aunt Claire?”

Jack did remember. Claire Delancey was Con’s sister. According to Jack’s grandfather, Claire could be holding the single most important piece of information he needed—Lilibelle Guillame Delancey’s last journal. “Your aunt that lives in France? Sure.”

“Well,” she paused and Jack saw her lips tremble. “She had a stroke sometime yesterday, and during the night she died. Mama just told me.”

Claire Delancey dead? Jack’s brain whirled. How was that going to affect his plan? Had vital information about Con Delancey’s death died with his sister?

Cara Lynn lifted a shaky hand to her mouth. He looked at her. Her eyes were dry, but the glow was gone from their blue depths. “Are you okay?” he asked. “I know you loved her a lot.”

She smiled sadly. “I’m going to miss her horribly. She lived in France for my entire life, but I’ve spent summers over there since I was ten.”

“She was your grandfather’s sister?” he asked.

Cara Lynn nodded. “And my grandmother’s best friend.”

“Oh, yeah?” He remembered. That was why his grandfather was sure Claire had important information about Con’s death.

Cara Lynn sighed and Jack put his arm around her and kissed her temple. “I’m sorry,” he said. For more than one reason.

“There’s Mama. She’s waving at us. Come on. Maybe the press is here and we can get that part of the reception over with.”

Jack looked across the room at Betty Delancey, who stood with one hand on the back of her husband Robert’s wheelchair. Next to her was a thin, dour man in a business suit who held a gray metal lockbox. Jack figured he ought to have a chain and a handcuff, or, given how tightly he was holding the box, maybe he didn’t. He started to ask Cara Lynn who the guy was and what was in the box, but she pointed toward the tall front doors.

“Look over there. Do you recognize the man and woman coming this way? They’re the co-anchors of a local news show. They’re here to interview us, take pictures and do a write-up of our romantic elopement and, of course, the large reception my family is giving us tonight.”

“News show? Really?” Jack stopped cold in his tracks.

“What’s wrong?” Cara Lynn asked teasingly. “Are you camera shy?”

The words camera shy didn’t even begin to describe what Jack was feeling. News show meant cameras, and cameras meant exposure. Jack was nobody in comparison to the Delanceys, but he knew that because of who they were, he would be in the spotlight for a few hours or days until the next society story came along.

His mother was in Florida, and he’d worked and lived in Biloxi for the past nine years. With any luck, none of his friends there would pay much attention to a two minute segment of society news from the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

“Jack?”

“It’s okay. I just don’t like being thrust into the spotlight by surprise,” he said. “I’ll manage.” He could tell his friends that he’d finally changed his name legally. They knew that he’d always wanted to get rid of the Francophied Jacques.

It took several minutes for the co-anchors to set the stage for the interview. Meanwhile, Jack saw the dour man with the box lean in a couple of times and whisper something to Cara Lynn’s mother, triggering a shake of her head and a hand gesture that obviously meant something like just hang in there. It won’t be long now.

“What’s that box?” he finally asked Cara Lynn.

“I’m not sure, but it could be—”

A man in a baseball cap with the TV station’s letters on it waved at them. The way he was throwing out orders and waving his arms, Jack figured he was probably the director. “Could you two get over here please,” he said, motioning them toward him. He proceeded to get them positioned just right for the video and still shots, then introduced Jack and Cara Lynn to the co-anchors.

Despite the fact that they appeared to be slavering at the idea of sinking their teeth into the youngest Delancey grandchild, Cara Lynn was gracious and polite. Jack had learned that about her as soon as he’d met her. She was probably the most compassionate person he’d ever known. Her condolences were never disingenuous, her delight never false, her disappointment never exaggerated or tempered. With Cara Lynn, if she said it she meant it.

The entire filming was over within about five minutes. The only thing either of the co-anchors had asked Jack was what it felt like to be thrust into such a large and famous family. Jack had given an innocuous answer and smiled for the camera. Then he was dismissed and the spotlight was on Cara Lynn and her parents.

“Okay, people,” the man in the baseball cap shouted. “That should do it.” He turned to Cara Lynn’s mother. “We’ve already taken long shots of the house, so we’re out of here. I’ll send you proofs and you can determine how many of each you might like to have for your personal remembrances.”

All the photographers and engineers and crew headed for the doors. Cara Lynn’s mother looked around. “Are we just family and friends now?” she asked the tall, good-looking man standing on the other side of Cara Lynn.

“I think so,” the man said. He took advantage of his height and looked around the large open hall. Then he walked over to Jack. “I think you’ve probably met just about everybody else by now. I’m Lucas Delancey, Cara Lynn’s oldest brother. I’ve been outside keeping an eye on the TV crew.” He held out his hand.

Jack shook it. “I’m Jack Bush, but I’m betting you already know that.”

Lucas smiled. “Well, I am a detective,” he said. “Excuse me.” Lucas walked over to the middle of the room and called out. “Hey, everybody. My mother has a presentation to make to our lovely little Cara Lynn. Everybody want to gather around?”

“Now what?” Jack whispered to Cara Lynn.

“I don’t know. Nobody ever tells me anything. They spend all their time ‘protecting’ me.” She emphasized the word with air quotes. “All I know is my mother was determined to have a reception for us since we, and I quote, ‘deprived her of the North Shore wedding of the season.’”

“Really?”

Cara Lynn took his arm. “Of course. Don’t you know how much havoc you created in the Delancey family by sweeping me away to a hurried justice of the peace wedding and no honeymoon and worst of all, no media coverage?”

“Then I guess I apologize.”

“Don’t apologize to me. Why do you think I agreed to elope? Save the apologies for my mother.”

Jack watched as she, like everyone else in the room, turned toward Betty Delancey.

“Hello,” Betty said from the front of the room. “I want to thank all of you for coming.”

Jack tuned out most of what Betty said. Instead, he paid attention to the man with the lockbox, wondering when he was going to open the mysterious container, and of course, what was inside it. His grandfather had always talked about Lilibelle Guillame Delancey’s last journal, the one she’d written in compulsively for hours and hours during the days following Con Delancey’s death.

He heard Lilibelle’s name and turned his attention back to what Betty was saying as she began to explain why Cara Lynn had been left a special inheritance from her grandmother, Lilibelle Guillame.

“She was the youngest child and the only granddaughter,” Betty said, “since at the time we all thought her dear cousin Rosemary was dead.”

There were murmurs and whispers all around Jack. He couldn’t, by any means, remember all the people he’d met tonight. After all, he knew that in addition to the eleven grandchildren and their spouses, there were other relatives and some close friends present.

Then her mother called Cara Lynn up to the front and gave a short, sweet speech about what a joy it was to have her as a daughter, while at the same time managing to sneak in a small admonishment about her having eloped.

“Your grandmother died when you were twelve. She always said that part of the legacy of the Delanceys was that there were very few girls born to the family. She wanted to leave something very special to her granddaughters. Rosemary, of course, received the monogrammed Delancey silver service for twenty-four when she graduated from high school. And for you, Cara Lynn, she left you her journals. She wrote in them daily, starting when she was twelve years old. She also left you the contents of this box.” Betty indicated the box.

The man holding the box set it carefully on the table near him and unlocked it.

“Come Cara, see what you have and show everyone.”

Cara Lynn walked up and kissed her mother on the cheek. Then she stepped over to the metal box and lifted the lid—and gasped aloud.

The murmurs and whispers started up again as some of the crowd pushed closer, hoping to get a first glimpse of the contents. She reached inside and pulled out a beautiful, pale beige leather-bound journal. The cacophony of voices increased when she held it up.

Beside Jack, a tall thin man gasped and muttered something under his breath. Jack glanced at him, but his attention was glued to Cara Lynn, or more specifically, to the journal in her hand.

“What is it?” a voice chimed in.

“Is that one of Grandmother’s journals?” another voice called.

Cara Lynn opened the book and looked at the first page. Her face brightened with delight. “It is. I have the full set, so this one must be the last journal she kept, from the year my grandfather died.”

Jack’s heart leapt into his throat and he remembered his grandfather’s words. On the day Con died, all she did was write in that book. The police were investigating the scene and questioning us and she just sat there and scribbled. She had to be writing down what happened. If I could just get my hands on that book, I know it contains the truth.

Jack looked around him, but he garnered no information from the peoples’ reactions. Everybody seemed mesmerized by the sight of the journal.

Betty walked over and stood beside her daughter. “But that’s not all, dear, is it?”

Cara Lynn held the journal tucked under one arm and reached back into the box with her other hand. She pulled out something that was wrapped in what looked like an ancient, frayed piece of linen or cotton.

“Unwrap it, darling,” her mother said, clasping her hands together in front of her, a look of unabashed anticipation and excitement on her face.

Jack held his breath just like a lot of other people in the room. He knew what Cara Lynn was holding.

“Mom, I’ll hold it if you’ll unwrap it,” Cara Lynn said, apparently unwilling to let go of the journal. Betty carefully lifted each corner of the delicate-looking cloth and let it fall over Cara Lynn’s hand. The slow reveal allowed the diamonds and rubies and sapphires and emeralds in the tiara to sparkle and shine to maximum effect.

Cara Lynn gasped, as did the entire room. Whether by accident or design, Betty had chosen the perfect place to reveal the tiara for the first time. They were standing under a huge crystal chandelier, which caught the reflections from the gems and turned them into thousands of multicolored sparks of light that danced across the walls and floor.

Cara Lynn turned the tiara so she could look at the large diamond in its center. The whispers and murmurs grew louder and louder until within a few seconds, the sound was deafening.

Jack himself was mesmerized, but not by the sparkly tiara, nor the journal under Cara Lynn’s arm. He was caught by the open, unfettered joy on his wife’s face.

“Oh,” she said, clutching the journal more tightly and looking from the tiara out over the crowd of people, 80 percent of whom were related to her. “I...can barely speak,” she said breathlessly, her gaze sweeping across the faces until she met Jack’s. The smile that shone on her face made him want to cry. “I’ve never been so happy as I am right now.”

Jack blinked and averted his gaze. It was like walking on hot coals to look into her eyes and hear her talking about her happiness. He turned away and found himself toe-to-toe with a tall, fit man in his late forties. Jack took a better look at him. His hair was dyed black, which made him look more like a cartoon than a real person, because nobody’s hair was that black naturally. His eyes were dark brown, and right now they were fixed on Jack.

“You’re Jack, Cara Lynn’s husband,” he said firmly, as if he was worried that Jack didn’t know. “And your last name is...?” He embellished his unfinished question with a flourishing gesture.

“Bush,” Jack responded, offering a small smile to counteract his flat response. Then with a wider smile he said, “Jack Bush.”

“Bush,” the man said thoughtfully.

“And you are?” Jack asked, resisting an almost overwhelming urge to run his finger along the inside of his collar. The way the man said his name made Jack second-guess his decision to take the name Bush. These people were as much—maybe more—old New Orleans as his family. Any one of them might know enough French to make the connection. Broussard was from a French word meaning brush man or bushman. At the time, he’d thought he was being clever. Now he wished he’d chosen Smith or Johnson.

He looked back at the man and waited for him to introduce himself. Finally, after shooting his cuffs and smoothing his school tie with a hand weighted down by a large Austrian crystal-studded ring, the black-haired man lifted his nose slightly. “Paul Guillame.”

The name sent a streak of adrenaline through Jack. Paul Guillame. A cheating, lying skunk who helped Con’s wife frame me for murder, Granddad had written about him. Watch your back. Jack kept his expression neutral and waited, but Guillame did not offer his hand, so Jack didn’t, either. “You’re related to the Delanceys?” he asked innocently.

Paul straightened and looked down his nose at him. “Senator Delancey’s wife was a Guillame,” he said. “The Guillames are a very old family here. But you, Jack Bush.” The man gestured around vaguely. “I hope you realize that you have committed a serious crime against the Delanceys and that they are even now preparing your punishment.”

Jack looked at him, stunned into silence. Crime? Punishment? What was the man talking about?

Guillame leaned forward. “Are you satisfied that the crime was worth whatever punishment will be meted out? Can your love for our pretty little youngest survive the wrath of the Delanceys?”

So that was it. His crime against the Delanceys was stealing their youngest. His paralyzed vocal chords loosened. “Sometimes something is so beautiful that it must be had, at any cost or any punishment.”

Again, as he’d hoped to do when they first came in, he tried to sound worldly, but he wasn’t sure if he’d pulled it off or if he’d just sounded silly.

Paul Guillame smiled. He reminded Jack of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. “Be aware, young Mr. Bush, our Cara Lynn has four brothers and four cousins. That’s eight descendants of Con Delancey. So anyone who hurts her faces death times eight.” Paul raised a hand with an impeccable manicure and pointed a finger at him. “Now, Monsieur Jacques, you add your sword to the pledge, which makes it death times nine.”

All the blood rushed from Jack’s head at Guillame’s use of the French pronunciation of his name. For a split second he felt as though he might pass out. But he kept himself composed and managed not to look around to see if anyone had noticed Paul calling him Jacques. He hoped his hand was not visibly shaking as he placed it over his heart. “I so pledge, Monsieur.” He sketched a little bow. When he raised his gaze to meet Guillame’s, the man’s black eyes were on the box again, but only for a brief instant, then he turned back to Jack.

“So, tell me Jack, where are you from anyway?”

As a Southerner, Jack understood the question. When asked where are you from, a Southerner knows the asker is not interested in where you live, or even where you grew up, He wants you to lay out your family’s history as far back as you know it.

Jack had prepared for this question and his brain was already queuing up the background he’d invented for himself. “My family originally came from—”

The room went dark. Pitch dark.

Startled, Jack took a second to orient himself. Screams and yells came from all around him. Someone tall bumped against him in the dark and almost knocked him off balance. He righted himself, reaching around him for something, anything, to grab in order to break his fall. His fingers brushed a sleeve. The sleeve was pulled away immediately, but Jack noticed that the person who’d bumped into him had been tall—at least as tall as he, and wearing a suit jacket or sports coat. The material that had brushed against his fingers was a thick, heavier fabric, the kind used to make men’s coats.

Then Jack heard a sound that penetrated all the other sounds around him. It was a shriek and a cry of pain. Cara Lynn.

At that instant the lights came back on. Jack, who was standing less than six feet from where Cara Lynn had been holding up the bejeweled tiara, saw her, crumpled on the floor in her satin gown, not moving.

“Cara!” he cried, just as someone, maybe Cara’s mother, screamed. “Oh, my God, Cara Lynn!” From another part of the room someone cried out, “The tiara! It’s gone!”

People were milling around everywhere. Jack saw the Delancey men moving in concert, as if they were all part of one company or battalion. In sync, they divided up. Some headed toward Cara Lynn and her mother. Some headed for the front doors. One of them—it looked like one of the twins—pulled out his cell phone, calling the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, no doubt.

When Jack got to Cara Lynn, two of her brothers were already there, bending over her, and a third Delancey was running toward them. He heard someone shout, “There he goes. Out the side door!” Jack leapt up onto a chair and spotted a man dressed in black, hurrying toward a pair of French doors on the side of the large hall. The man glanced backward, then threw open the doors and bolted. He was cradling something close to his chest like a football. Jack couldn’t tell what it was.

Around the doors, people were crying out and pointing, and Jack saw Delancey men pushing their way through the crowd, but the man in black obviously had a huge head start.

Jack’s muscles tensed and his tendons tightened, although intellectually, he knew that if the Delanceys—cops, military men and investigators—couldn’t catch the thief, he had no chance. But just at the instant when he was about to spring down off the chair and try to lend his help, he heard Cara Lynn’s voice.

“Jack?”

It was raspy and choked, but it was her. He turned back toward her. She had three of her big, capable Delancey protectors hovering over her, but she wasn’t paying any attention to them. She was looking straight at him. Horrified, he saw blood streaming down the side of her face and her expression was twisted in pain.

“Cara?” he whispered. Then his gaze rose to the table where the journal and the tiara had sat. All that remained was the square of old cloth. The bejeweled crown and the book were gone. Jack cared nothing—less than nothing—for the tiara. But that journal, if it really was Lilibelle Guillame’s last journal, could exonerate his grandfather from any wrongdoing, if his grandfather’s theory was true and Lilibelle was the one who’d killed Con Delancey.

Jack glanced in the direction of the French doors. Then he looked at his wife, whom he’d duped into marrying him so he could find that journal.

He took a deep breath. The journal! his brain screamed. Get the journal. But his head didn’t stand a chance against his stupid heart. Berating himself, he rushed to his bride’s side, bent down and used his thumb to wipe blood away from the small ridge just above her brow. Instantly, the three men turned on him.

“Don’t touch her,” one said.

Before Jack could react, the second one, who’d been talking on the phone, said, “We’ve got cars coming from everywhere. That guy won’t get far.”

“Right. Lucas took off after him. He’ll have him in handcuffs before the cruisers even get here,” the third one said.

Before he finished speaking, someone in the direction of the French doors shouted. “Look! He dropped the tiara! See it—”

“Nobody move!” a voice boomed. “Hey! Pipe down! Barton, get that crown! Everybody—Shut! Up!”

“Did you see anything?” one of the brothers asked Cara Lynn as another pressed a handkerchief to the cut on her forehead.

“Has anybody got any water?” the third man shouted.

To Jack, their voices sounded like a swarm of bees around his head. It occurred to him that this was what Cara Lynn had been talking about when she’d described how she’d spent her life being suffocated by her brothers. He wanted to swat them away and take care of her himself. She might be their sister, but she was his wife.

Then he noticed that one of the straps of her gown was broken. And sure enough, just as he’d predicted, without the strap, the entire left side of the dress was quickly headed south, toward a serious wardrobe malfunction. Jack shrugged out of his jacket and placed it around her shoulders. She looked up at him gratefully and pulled the lapels of the coat closed and stuck her arms into the sleeves.

Her brothers glared at him but didn’t say anything, so Jack stayed there with his arm around her.

By the time everybody was convinced that Cara Lynn was fine mentally, emotionally and physically, and no ambulance needed to be called, Lucas was back.

Everybody turned to look at him. Even Jack could read his expression like a children’s book. No luck.

“He disappeared,” Lucas said, a disgusted frown on his face.

“Oh, my God,” Paul said from behind Jack. “Did he really drop the tiara?”

Lucas leveled a grim glare at Paul. “We recovered the tiara, but he got the journal. Did any of you get a look at his face? Cara Lynn?”

Beside Jack, Cara Lynn shook her head.

Lucas pushed the fingers of one hand through his hair, then shouted at no one in particular. “How in hell did he get in and grab that stuff in the middle of a room full of cops?”

Chapter Two

It was after midnight by the time Jack and Cara Lynn got home.

“You’d think with so many Delancey cops there as witnesses, it shouldn’t have taken so long,” Cara Lynn said, looking in her compact mirror at the cut on her forehead.

“Really?” Jack said. “It’s only been three hours. My guess is if a thief had broken in and tried to steal a six or seven-figure piece of jewelry from any other house in this entire town, every single person there would have been hauled down to the police station, and many of them would still be there twenty-four hours later.”

“Well, that’s what they ought to do. It’s stupid that nobody caught that thief.” She gingerly touched the cut with her fingertip.

“I need to get you some antibiotic ointment and a strip bandage,” Jack said.

“I’ll do it. Damn, it still hurts.”

“Why don’t you get in bed and I’ll get you some water or something?”

“I won’t be able to sleep,” she said.

Jack got a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, opened it and handed it to her. “Were you able to see anything? Could you tell anything about the thief?”

“See anything? I don’t know what room you were in,” she retorted, “but where I was it was black as pitch. Like I told the detective, I felt a hand on me, then I was pushed down and I hit my shoulder and head on the marble table. The next thing I knew everybody was hovering over me.” She shivered.

“I think you need to go to bed,” he said. “Don’t you have to finish getting ready for your new show down in New Orleans in the morning?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve still got one piece to finish. I should get up at five.”

Jack grabbed a bottle of water for himself. He twisted the top off and took a long swallow, then gazed at her as if he was thinking about what he was going to say. “What do you think that tiara is worth?”

Cara Lynn shrugged and winced. “Damn it, my shoulder is sore, too. The tiara? I don’t know. My grandmother said it was priceless, but she let me play Princess with it.”

Jack paused with the bottle halfway to his lips. “You’re kidding.”

“No. I played dress-up with some of her old clothes and the tiara. I remember it was heavy. She got mad if I dropped it.”

“I’ll bet she did.”

“I heard my parents and Uncle Michael talking about it once. They were saying half a million.”

Jack’s jaw tightened and the expression on his face was unreadable, but it bothered her. “That guy was small-time. I don’t get why he chanced stealing the tiara.”

“What do you mean? If he’d gotten out of there, he’d be rich for the rest of his life.”

He gave a half shrug. “How can anyone possibly sell something that famous?”

“He could remove the stones and sell them, right?”

“Those gigantic rubies and emeralds and diamonds have been photographed, measured, weighed. I’ll guarantee you, the insurance company has an exact description of each stone. Whoever steals that baby better enjoy playing dress-up, because they’re not going to get any money for it.”

Cara Lynn stared at him. “You know an awful lot about famous jewels,” she said. “Please tell me you’re not an international jewel thief.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I’m not an international jewel thief. Every bit of that information can be found on the internet or in movies. The Thomas Crown Affair, for instance.”

She nodded, but a trace of unease began to stir under her breastbone. It was the same feeling that had been a part of her ever since she and Jack had gotten married. She loved him and she was sure he loved her, but occasionally, he’d send her a look or make a comment that worried her.

There was something wrong between them and she couldn’t figure out what it was. And every time she tried to talk to Jack about it, she ended up in his arms, making love.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go to bed. You need to get as much sleep as possible. I’ll guarantee you’re going to be sore tomorrow, and you’ll probably have at least one bruise.” He headed toward the bedroom.

“Okay. I’m just going to get the coffee ready to turn on in the morning.”

Alone for the first time since the party had started, Cara Lynn stood in the middle of the kitchen floor while tears slid down her cheeks. She’d done her best not to cry in front of her brothers or Jack, but everything that had happened had built up in her until she could no longer hold back.

From the instant she’d managed to clear her head after hitting it against the marble table, she’d called for Jack. When the lights came back on, she’d spotted him standing on a chair, looking over the crowd toward the French doors, in the direction the thief had run.

As soon as he’d heard her call, he’d turned around. He’d looked horrified at the blood on her face, but before he’d rushed to her side, he’d glanced back toward the French doors one more time.

She’d sensed the struggle in him, and she’d found it odd. He wasn’t like her brothers. Two cops, a former special forces officer and an attorney. She’d expected them to jump into action and they had. It was their training.

But Jack was an architect—and her husband. Why had his first thought been to pursue the thief rather than rush to her side to be sure she was okay?

Glancing cautiously toward her bedroom, she listened. She didn’t hear anything. However, if Jack was true to form, he’d be back in the kitchen in a few minutes to get some more water before turning in.

She opened her clutch and looked inside. Then she breathed a sigh of relief. She’d been afraid she’d imagined slipping the old envelope out from between the pages of the journal and sliding it into her clutch when the lights had gone out.

Touching the slightly yellowing paper, she wondered if anyone else had noticed its corner sticking out between two pages of the journal. She didn’t think so. When she’ d lifted the journal out of the box she’d instinctively covered the corner with her fingers.

She wasn’t sure why her first instinct had been to keep its existence secret. She just knew she felt compelled to do so.

Then the lights had gone out and someone jerked the journal out of her hand. She’d held onto the envelope and her clutch with all her strength as a pair of rough hands pushed her down. She’d stumbled, hit her head and almost passed out, but she hadn’t let go of the envelope. Just as she was slipping it into her clutch, the emergency generator had growled and the lights had come back on. She was pretty sure no one had seen her.

She should have given it to the police. She should have told her brothers. But for some reason, with the journal gone, she felt as though this letter was hers. Hers and nobody else’s. Not that she knew why she felt that way, or had any inkling of what was inside it.

She was looking at the back, with its sealed but crumbling flap. She turned it over and her heart gave a little leap. There was her name, written in the distinctive and utterly beautiful, yet almost impossible to decipher, lovely handwriting of her grandmother, Lilibelle Guillame. For Cara Lynn.

Most likely it was a sweet and rambling message about the sentimental meaning of the tiara and her journal. No matter what it was, she wanted to keep it secret at least until she had time to read it thoroughly. Right now, there was no time to look at it without the chance of Jack coming in.

So she went into the pantry and pulled on a loose baseboard underneath the bottom shelf. She tucked the envelope into the hollow space behind it, where she kept two thousand dollars in small bills, her passport and the beautiful emerald necklace her mother had given her when she graduated from college. The necklace had belonged to Betty’s mother, who had been a diplomat’s wife and traveled all over Europe with her husband. Just as she was replacing the baseboard, she heard Jack’s bare feet coming down the hall.

Quickly, she got the baseboard into place, grabbed three bottles of water, then stepped out of the pantry into the kitchen.

Jack was opening the refrigerator, his bare toes sticking out from his dress pants. He’d removed his jacket and tie and unbuttoned his shirt. It hung open, revealing a hint of his excellent abs.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Putting some more water in the fridge,” she said, wishing she’d grabbed something else. She’d restocked the water just that morning.

“Sparkling water? What for?” he asked, gesturing toward the top shelf of the fridge. “There are—” he stopped. “There were three regular and three sparkling waters in here this morning. Now there’s only two sparkling, counting this one.” He held up the one he’d just picked up. “I thought you were gone all day.”

“I was,” she said, putting the three bottles on the shelf. “I was in a hurry so I didn’t stop to get one. You must have drunk another one.”

“Nope.” He closed the door. “That’s odd.”

Cara Lynn thought about that morning. She’d rushed out so quickly she hadn’t grabbed her usual bottle of water. “Well, if you didn’t drink it and I didn’t drink it—”

“What? You think someone came in here and drank our water?” he asked, his mouth quirked slightly. “Who’s got keys?”

“Nobody, except the woman who cleans, and she had foot surgery three weeks ago.”

Jack twisted the top off the water and took a long drink. “Maybe she came by.”

“If she did, it was just for the water, because she certainly didn’t clean,” Cara Lynn said wryly.

“How can you tell?” Jack retorted.

She swatted at him and smiled. “Hilarious,” she said, “considering I picked up four empty bottles just like this from your side of the bed this morning. I’ve got a long day tomorrow and I will take some water with me.”

He didn’t comment, just headed back to the bedroom. She added two more bottles to the refrigerator, then followed him, going into their bathroom to undress. She shrugged out of Jack’s jacket, then dropped the single intact strap off her shoulder and let the dress fall to the floor, leaving her completely naked. She looked down at herself, blushing. She’d forgotten her little flirtation with her husband from before the party. He probably had, too.

Quickly, she reached for her blue silk nightgown and slipped it over her head. They were married, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d only known Jack for two months. She hadn’t quite gotten over her shyness yet.

“So, what did you think?” she asked Jack, peering around the bathroom door. He was in profile to her, unzipping his pants. His shirt was already off and the sight of his lean, tanned body made heat curl deep inside her, as it did every time she looked at him. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. It was still hard for her to believe that they’d fallen in love at first sight. Actually, to be truthful, she wasn’t surprised that she’d fallen for him. What amazed her was that he’d fallen in love with her so fast.

She wondered, as she had many times, had he felt the same startling ache in the middle of his chest that she had when they’d seen each other across the gallery floor where she was exhibiting her fiber-art pieces? Had he immediately felt desire like a tuning fork shimmering and humming inside him? Did he remember each and every second of that first glance, as she had? She would never forget how he’d met her gaze, his mouth curved in a secret smile she hadn’t seen since, then walked straight over to her and asked her to skip the show and go with him to get something to eat.

Even though she’d been a headliner at the gallery that night, she’d gone with him. Four weeks later, they were married.

“Jack?” she said again.

“Hmm?” He glanced at her sidelong, his dark brows shadowing his eyes. “What did I think about what?

“About all the Delanceys?”

“Oh. They’re pretty intense, especially about the baby of the family. Even Paul Guillame got a dig in to me. He told me that your brothers and cousins had pledged death times eight to anyone who dared to harm you.”

“Oh, you met Paul. Did he really say that? I can’t believe it.”

“Why?”

She shrugged, thinking about her distant cousin on her mother’s side. “He doesn’t seem that deep or that interested in anyone but himself.”

“Whoa. Ouch. Catty much?”

She felt her cheeks turn pink. “That wasn’t very nice, was it?”

Jack shook his head. “Nope. He might be shallow, but he’s right about your brothers—and cousins. I bent down to check on you and three big guys were all over me like it was their job to take care of you, not mine.”

Cara Lynn felt a warm glow start in her midsection. “You think it’s your job to take care of me?”

He looked up, his brows knitted, as if he hadn’t even thought about what he’d said. With a slight tilt of his head, he said, “I guess.”

Cara Lynn laughed. “I really like that. Not that I need taking care of.”

He smiled. “I know. You’re perfectly capable of handling yourself.”

“Please, tell my brothers that.”

“Why? What’s the problem with being doted on by your brothers?”

“Nothing, if all you get are the perks. But with four older brothers, I have to put up with the downside, too.”

“Right. Please, tell me the downside to being the favorite in a huge family of wealthy Louisianans.”

“Just like tonight. Nobody thinks I can take care of myself. They don’t even think I can think for myself. It’s like I’ve had five dads threatening boyfriends and checking what time I got home from dates my whole life. And if that’s not enough, two of my brothers and three of my cousins are cops. I can’t count how many times they’ve stopped my car on the road with blue lights blazing, just to be sure I’m all right and on my way home.”

Jack laughed. “Nobody’s threatened or stopped me.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re hardly a boyfriend. But I can tell you this. If we hadn’t eloped, we’d only be about a fourth of the way to the wedding by now.”

Jack’s grin faded and he looked at her closely. “Did you want a big wedding?” he asked.

“No,” she said immediately. “I mean, sure I did, when I was a little girl, I dreamed about the huge wedding with the most beautiful white dress in the world and my knight in shining armor waiting at the end of the aisle. But what I found out as I got older is that the press and everybody who either loved or hated my grandfather, consider the Delanceys as Louisiana royalty.” She pantomimed air quotes around the two words.

“So, your wedding would have been the event of the season?” He spoke lightly, but his jaw ticced, as it did occasionally when he couldn’t relax the tension in it.

“Not that our family hasn’t had quite a few weddings in the past few years, but yes. Especially since I was the last holdout and the only girl.”

“What about your cousin Rosemary?”

“Rosemary and Dixon had the tiniest, least announced ceremony in the history of the state. And Hannah, Claire’s granddaughter, and her fiancé, Mack, aren’t planning on getting married until after her mom’s liver transplant. So that left me as the only girl with even a chance at a big wedding.” She gave a little sigh. “My mother has expressed her extreme disappointment that I denied her all the pomp and circumstance.”

“We could still—” Jack started to say as he took off his pants and boxers.

Cara Lynn broke in. “Don’t even go there,” she commanded, unable to take her eyes off him. “Although, it would shut my family up. I can’t tell you how much ribbing I’ve taken about being the last one to marry.” She shook her head. “My brothers and cousins have been falling like dominoes over the past few years.”

“So, when your cousin Paul said I was a criminal that needed punishment—?”

“He said that?”

“Yep. That’s fine though,” he said, hanging up his dress pants and pulling on pajama bottoms. He looked at her and smiled.

She hated that false smile that said, I’m smiling and agreeable, because that’s what you want. It had only appeared after they’d gotten married. In fact, she was pretty sure she could trace it back to the day—or at least within a few days—of their elopement.

“I’m glad they’re worried about you,” he finished.

Was he? He’d been so sweet and sexy and fascinating before they’d eloped. Now he was still sexy and fascinating, but he’d become more reserved and often seemed distant. The change in him made her nervous. It seemed as if sometimes, when he wasn’t aware she was watching him, he appeared to be sad or even angry about something. Could it be he regretted marrying her?

She smiled back, feeling as if her smile was as vacant and false as his, and a shudder slid through her, as if a goose had walked over her grave.

Ignoring the sinking feeling in her chest each time she saw that artificial smile, she took a deep breath and walked out of the bathroom toward him. Jack, his pajama bottoms hanging loose and low on his hips, met her halfway.

“You are beautiful tonight,” he said, running his palms down her bare arms and bending to kiss her shoulder. “Your skin glows like rose petals in moonlight.”

“Wow,” she said nervously, as his hands and lips began to stir her. “That’s quite poetic.”

“I have my moments,” he murmured, tracing his fingertips along her shoulder where he had kissed, then up the side of her neck to her jaw, and farther, until he reached her eyebrow. He kissed her there. “Did you get a chance to look inside the book?” he asked softly.

“What?” The question surprised her. Usually, when he made love to her he was single-minded, focused, as if he were a surgeon performing a very delicate procedure that could be disastrous if he made one tiny mistake.

“Your inheritance from your grandmother. It was one of her journals, like the ones in your office, right?”

“Oh. The journal. It looked exactly like the others. They must be hugely expensive, with all that leather and engraving and lace and the metal page corners. But no. I started to open the cover to look at the first page, but the lights went out before I saw anything.”

He pushed her hair away from her ear and nibbled on the earlobe. As she gasped with surprise and pleasure, he said, “What did the cover say?”

The front cover of each journal was engraved. She had traced the first line with her finger. “They all have her name at the top. When she was a little girl it just said Lilibelle Guillame. The later ones say Lilibelle Guillame Delancey. Beneath her name is the year. And the one that was snatched tonight had 1986 on it, I’m pretty sure.”

“1986? Isn’t that when Con Delancey died? I heard someone ask if it was her last journal. Was it?” he murmured.

Cara Lynn pushed away. “Why are you so interested in—”

He nipped at her earlobe, then lowered his head and kissed her collarbone as his hand slid down, down, to catch the hem of her nightgown and push it up.

He ran his hand along her hip, then gasped. “I’d forgotten you took off your panties,” he whispered as he caressed the delicate, sensitive skin on the inside of her thighs, then touched her intimately. He pressed his lips to the soft skin below her jaw and moaned as he increased the rhythm of his caresses.

At that instant, all rational thought left her head. Instead of trying to recapture even one of those thoughts, she slid her fingers into his hair, bending forward to reach for his mouth with hers.

He turned his head so that her kiss landed on his cheek, because he was bending toward her ear again. He nipped at it, a bit harder this time. At the same time, he whispered, “Beautiful.”

Intense, nearly painful thrills spiraled through her. Her head fell back, exposing her neck and the underside of her chin to more caresses, but he stopped, pulling away. His long fingers hooked the straps of her nightgown and slid them over her shoulders. The loose, slippery silk fell to the floor, leaving her naked. She shivered, feeling her breasts tighten in anticipation of his touch.

He slid his palms down her arms to her elbows and farther, down to her fingers. Slipping past them, he cupped her firm bottom.

On the way back up her legs, thighs and hips, he skimmed his fingers along a path of exploration that turned every fraction of an inch of her body into an erogenous zone. Finally, when she was sure her wobbly knees wouldn’t hold her up for another second, he cupped her breasts, barely large enough to fill his palms, and caressed the soft skin with his thumbs, moving closer and closer to the areolae.

With each caress, her breaths became quicker until the moment when the pads of his thumbs slid across the taut tips of her nipples. She gasped and moaned, and he bent his head to place his mouth on one hard point. He grazed it with his teeth. She arched her back and pushed her fingers into his hair, holding his head there, until he moved to the other breast to graze it and send flames arcing through her again.

“Jack, please,” she begged, tightening her fists in his silky dark hair.

He raised his head and his dark, fathomless gaze met hers. “What?” he asked gruffly.

She knew this game. They played it often. She wanted him deeply, primally. He’d brought her to this point and he knew it. Now he wanted her to tell him what she wanted.

Only what she always said and what she really wanted were two entirely different things.

“Please, Jack, don’t make me say it,” she whispered.

He held her gaze, that little place in his jaw tensing and relaxing, tensing and relaxing. “Say it, Cara,” he rasped. “Say it.”

Tears burned in the back of her throat and she swallowed, hoping to keep the need to cry there and not allow it to crawl all the way into her eyes where they would fall and he would win. Her new husband, whom she did not know at all, but whose touch she craved like she craved air, would win again.

“Jack...”

His eyes left hers and moved down to her mouth. She saw his gaze slide over her face and down to her lips. She almost went over the edge just in anticipation of him kissing her. Because he rarely did.

She looked at his straight, hard mouth. Then she reached for it with hers. He stayed still and let her kiss him, but he barely reciprocated. Then, after a very few seconds, he pulled away and picked her up and tossed her onto the bed. He pushed his pajama bottoms down and off, then lay beside her and began to caress her intimately.

She gasped at the feel of his hand, his fingers, as he bent his head again to taste and tease her nipples. He lifted his head and looked at her. “Say it,” he demanded.

Cara Lynn’s throat spasmed and the tears escaped. They rushed to her eyes and gathered there, dampening her lids and seeping out to trickle across her skin and wet the pillowcase. She squeezed her lids shut, trying to wring out the last tear, then she opened them again and looked into Jack’s shadowed ones.

“I want you inside me,” she said. “I want you now.”

He rose above her, the lean muscles of his arms and chest bulging with effort, and entered her with a shuddering breath. And then, what Cara Lynn really wanted, he finally gave her. Once he was inside her and filling her with his hot hard sex, he kissed her, just as deeply and intimately as she had not dared to ask him to. It would crush her if he ever refused.

As the quest for release built until she thought she would burst, and as he thrust harder and harder until she was sure she couldn’t stand it, his kiss also deepened, until she felt close to passing out from the sheer flood of pleasure and love and lust that overwhelmed her.

Then she did burst into ecstasy and Jack burst with her. For a brief moment out of time they were two supernovas crashing in the depths of space, becoming one, a pure blue flame of energy and love, and nothing else mattered.

Afterward, Jack lay there as long as he could, holding Cara Lynn. Her head fit perfectly in the hollow of his shoulder and her quiet breaths warmed the soft skin beneath his jaw line. Her slender, supple body molded perfectly to his. He hated that.

He shifted restlessly and she made a soft sound in her throat. “It’s okay. Go back to sleep,” he said, as he always did, then he slid his arm out from under her and rolled up off the bed.

He pulled on his pajama bottoms and went into the living room and through the French doors out onto the balcony. The night was cool and a breeze blew in off the Mississippi River. The sky was pale with the lights from the cruise ships and the fishing boats. Jack closed his eyes and took a long breath, reminding himself why he was standing here, in this place, with the taste and scent of Cara Lynn Delancey—Cara Lynn Bush—still in his mouth and nose.

All for show. “All for show,” he said aloud, wishing he could shout it. Wishing he could tattoo it on the inside of his eyelids. And wishing, just for an instant, that he was not Jacques Broussard, grandson of the man who died in prison, falsely accused of the murder of Con Delancey, but merely a stranger.

Then, as happened when he let his guard down, he thought about what might have been, had he met Cara Lynn accidentally, if they’d had a chance to meet and learn to know each other in a world apart from reality—

The sound of the French doors opening stopped that thought cold.

“Hey.” Cara Lynn’s soft voice wrapped around his sore heart like a velvet bag that protects a fragile crystal. “Are you okay?”

“Sure,” he responded. “Just wanted some air. I got hot.”

She stepped out onto the balcony beside him. “It’s cool out here, isn’t it? Look at the river. It’s so beautiful at night.”

“Really? You like all the garish lights on the cruise ships and the bridges? They’re just light pollution.”

She slapped at his arm playfully. “No, they’re not. It’s like Christmas every night!” she cried. “They blink and twinkle just like Christmas Eve when you’re supposed to be in bed. I love it. And after it rains, the whole horizon turns into a wonderland, shining like thousands of sparklers.”

He looked at her, his mouth curving upward in a reluctant smile. “How did you get to be twenty-six years old without ever growing up?” he asked. “You’re like a child. Does nothing bad ever touch you? Do you never feel sad or angry or grief-stricken?”

To his chagrin, her smile faded and the sparks in her eyes went out. “Of course bad things happen, Jack. Of course I can be sad and angry and grief-stricken. I thought my heart would break when my best friend Kate’s little boy was kidnapped recently.” She stared out beyond him, into an unhappy distance.

After a long time, she looked back at him and her smile returned. “But he was fine, and then I met you and my world was happy again.” She threw her arms up. “And it’s a beautiful night. Want to sleep out here? I can make a pallet on the balcony floor out of quilts.”

Jack shook his head. “I need to work on some plans. You need to go to sleep. Don’t forget everything you have to do tomorrow.”

Cara Lynn nodded and kissed him on the nose.

He recoiled. He didn’t mean to. But it was a knee-jerk reaction to the closeness he felt whenever they kissed. The longing that simmered deep inside him was becoming harder and harder to control. He craved her kiss and yet he didn’t like kissing her, because he was convinced that it was the kissing and touching that were the most intimate acts, not the sex.

This balancing act he was performing was about to drive him crazy. He didn’t want her to get even the most fleeting thought that he might not love her. But at the same time, he was becoming desperate to protect himself from falling for her. He had to keep all his plates spinning in the air, because through her was the only way he was ever going to find the proof he needed to clear his grandfather’s name.

So he returned her casual kiss—pressing his lips to her cheek near her temple.

She stepped back, her eyes bright. “Actually, yes,” she said, obviously working to make her tone casual and talkative. “I do have a lot to do tomorrow, and I’m tired tonight, for some reason.” She smiled at him as she backed through the French doors. “G’night, handsome.”

“Good night, beautiful,” he muttered, but she’d already gone inside and closed the doors.

Chapter Three

Jack stayed on the balcony for another fifteen minutes or so, staring at the bridge lights. He squinted to see if that would help him to see them as Christmas lights, but it was a waste of time. Lights were lights, not fairy tale sparkles or holiday decorations.

However, they did draw the eye, kind of like a river full of stars. For a while he stared at them, letting his thoughts wander back over the party. He’d tried to catalog each person’s name as he met them, equating them to what his granddad had said about them, as best he could remember. And while he did that, he worked on remembering who he might have seen that didn’t seem to belong.

Cara Lynn’s father, Robert, was a wheelchair-bound man who had difficulty speaking. His grandfather had told him about the older of Con Delancey’s two sons, both of whom had been young men with new families when Granddad had known them twenty-eight years ago. He’d called Robert angry and bitter, incapable of holding his whiskey or his temper.

It hurt Jack to think that Cara Lynn had been brought up in such an angry, hostile home. But from her accounting, her experience had been very different than her older brothers’.

Harte and I didn’t have the same father as Lucas, Ethan and Travis, she’d told him. By the time we were old enough to remember, he’d had the stroke. The only anger I remember was toward himself—his body. Trouble talking and walking.

He thought about his own parents and how he had grown up. As an only child, the problems he’d had with his folks stemmed from their over-protectiveness of him. Their biggest fear for him was that he spent too much time at the federal penitentiary visiting his granddad. But they had never refused to let him go.

Michael, Con’s youngest son, seemed like a paragon of normalcy compared to Robert. Jack knew from Cara Lynn about Michael’s time spent in prison, as well as his issues with his oldest son Dawson, but he seemed a likeable man, and his children seemed extraordinary.

In fact, it was a little disgusting just how likeable, intelligent and successful all the Delancey grandchildren were.

Jack wondered how they would react when they found out that Armand Broussard, who’d spent over twenty-five years in prison for their grandfather’s murder, was innocent. Jack wasn’t sure who had actually killed Con Delancey, but he knew his granddad hadn’t done it.

He glanced absently in the direction of the foyer, where his briefcase sat on the floor next to the foyer table. Inside it were letters from his grandfather, and in one of those letters his granddad had written his account of the murder and named Con Delancey’s killer, or at least his opinion of who had killed him.

Jack couldn’t even imagine how the news of the killer’s actual identity would affect the Delancey grandchildren. Probably not a lot, he decided. After all, the oldest of them had been only ten when it happened.

Cara Lynn hadn’t even been born. He was pretty sure it wouldn’t affect her at all. At least Jack hoped it wouldn’t. Whoa. No, he didn’t. He gave his head a mental shake.

Of course he wanted it to affect Cara Lynn. Just as much as the rest of them. He hoped it would gnaw holes in their stomachs that their family had allowed the wrong man to be convicted of murder, just like it gnawed holes in his that his grandfather had been locked up for a quarter of a century for a crime he hadn’t committed.

He went inside, grabbed his briefcase from the foyer and set it on the kitchen table, brushing aside a small strip of paper sitting near Cara Lynn’s evening bag. He picked it up, thinking to throw it in the trash. It was old, yellowed and brittle, a tiny rounded edge of the flap of an envelope, an old-fashioned lick-’em, stick-’em one.

Where had it come from? He stared at it for a few seconds, rubbing one edge between his fingers. It turned to dust. Obviously old. Looking at his dusty fingers, he felt a strong sense that there was something important about it. It had been lying near Cara Lynn’s purse. Could that mean it had something to do with the lockbox or its contents?

He stopped and repeated the thought aloud. “The lockbox,” he whispered, considering the implications. If it really was an envelope, then that meant there was a letter, didn’t it? A letter from whom? Maybe from Cara Lynn’s grandmother to her youngest granddaughter, written some time between 1986, when Con Delancey had died, and thirteen years ago when Lilibelle had died. Any paper could have turned yellow and brittle after being stored in a hot place, say an attic, for that long.

But how had Cara Lynn gotten the envelope—or at least that part of it? He looked at her purse, wondering if she’d left the envelope in there. With a furtive glance toward the back of the apartment, he released the clasp on the small rectangular bag and peered inside. No envelope.

So, if she actually had a letter that was inside the box, had she looked at it here at the table? And if she hadn’t put it back in her purse, where had she put it?

She had refused to answer his questions about the journal, wanting to know why he was so curious. Of course, he’d been making love to her at the time, and judging by her response to his nips and caresses, she’d been caught up in the pleasure of the moment.

A brief aftershock of lust echoed through him at the memory of how she’d moved beneath him. He immediately shut down those thoughts and made himself think about where she’d have put that envelope. He opened her evening bag and looked inside, feeling a little guilty. He wondered how guilty he’d have felt if he really loved her.

Stepping out of the kitchen and down the hall, he went into the small second bedroom and closed the door. Cara Lynn had made the room into an office. There was a desk and chair, and a drafting table on which a watercolor sketch of a bright wall hanging lay askew. It depicted a nearly abstract cat drawn in black using only three strokes. The hanging would be exquisite as part of her collection at the gallery. He hoped she’d managed to finish putting together the fiber-art version.

He tore his gaze away from the sketch and looked at the bookcases. There, on the third shelf were the gold-etched white leather journals. He took the first one out and opened the cover. On the first page was the handwritten date of June 5, 1951. Lilibelle would have been twelve. There were red sticky flags on some of the pages with tiny scribbled notes in Cara Lynn’s neat handwriting. Notes for the genealogy book she was working on for the Delancey and Guillame families.

He quickly scanned the room, but didn’t see an envelope. However, it did look as though someone had been in there. The spines of her grandmother’s journals were uneven, and there were spaces where books had been removed. Jack picked up the sketch of the black cat and looked beneath it. There was a piece of paper with some notes on it in Cara Lynn’s hand. And beneath the paper a journal that should have been on the shelf behind him. He picked it up and put it back. Then he checked around the small room, but he didn’t see the envelope.

Back in the kitchen he put the piece of an envelope flap into a plastic baggie. Unlocking his briefcase, he dug under a small stack of architectural drawings and paper-clipped reports down to several rubber-banded stacks of envelopes.

Rifling through them, he found the ones postmarked the earliest. “Okay, Granddad,” he whispered. “I met most of the Delanceys tonight. Let’s see if my impression of them matches yours.”

As he began to read his grandfather’s letter for the twentieth time, or the fiftieth, he thought about what he’d told Cara Lynn, about needing to stay up to work on some plans, his implication being that they were architectural drawings.

He smothered a wry laugh. He was working on plans all right—plans to clear his grandfather’s name. He’d married Cara Lynn Delancey to gain access to the documents that could help him prove his granddad’s innocence. If he broke her heart, well, maybe that would satisfy his need for revenge.

* * *

HOURS LATER, JACK rubbed his eyes and yawned. A glance at the kitchen clock told him that his burning eyes and foggy head were telling him the truth. He had been up all night. It was after 5:00 a.m.

Cara Lynn would be getting up in about an hour. He should have gone to bed hours ago, but he’d wanted to read over his grandfather’s notes while his first impressions of the Delanceys were still fresh in his mind.

He had looked forward to hating every single one of them. But to his surprise, he didn’t. They seemed like ordinary people. Okay, maybe not ordinary. He sorted through the letters again until he came to the one where Granddad had listed Con Delancey’s grandchildren.

Mr. Delancey’s two sons, Michael and Robert, seem rather ordinary, although I can see that they have the genes to be great, like their father. But perhaps Con’s philandering and their mother’s resentment kept them from achieving everything they could have. In any case, their children—Con’s grandchildren—are but babies and it’s already obvious they are extraordinary.

Robert, Jr. is the oldest, at nine. Already, it seems to me, he is showing a remarkable resemblance to his grandfather, both in looks and personality. Maybe it’s because he’s the oldest, but I see in him the most potential of all of them. Mark my word, he’ll follow Con into politics, and likely, will be better at it.

Jack took a pencil and jotted a note in the margin, next to the comment. Died in plane crash at age twenty-three. So much for potential.

He read the next line. Lucas, his younger brother, is at age six, already intense, even angry, much like his father. If he continues like this, he’ll be a criminal before he’s twenty-one. Maybe he can turn himself around.

Jack remembered Lucas and his wife Angela, who was carrying their first child. Jack wrote in the margin. Still intense. Channeled into police work.

Jack continued down the list of Delancey children and his grandfather’s impressions of them. A fierce jealousy rose up inside him, as it had every other time he read it. He hated that his grandfather had spent even a few moments thinking about Con Delancey’s grandkids and what he saw them becoming as they grew.

But more than that, he hated that his grandfather had been right about them. While he had not been a prophet, he’d certainly been insightful enough to see that Con Delancey’s grandkids were extraordinary.

Armand Broussard had thought his own grandson was extraordinary, too. Jack blinked against the sudden stinging in his eyes. He missed his granddad. Had it already been half a year since he’d died? Jack had never seen him in anything except his orange prison jumpsuit, until he looked at him in the casket before the funeral service. That sight, his beloved Papi in a dark suit with that awful makeup and lipstick designed to make the corpse look natural, made Jack cry for the first time in his life.

“I’m sorry about that, Papi,” he whispered, repeating the same words he’d uttered over his grandfather’s body that day at the funeral home. “I couldn’t help that. But I swear I will clear your name.”

He put the letter back in its ragged envelope, slid the rubber band around the stack and inserted it under the architectural plans and drawings. Then he took out a small spiral bound notebook and paged through it for the notes he’d jotted as he’d read through the letters the first time. After glancing at his handwritten notes, he leaned back in the kitchen chair and stretched.

He didn’t have to refer to any notes to recall what his grandfather had said to him at their last meeting. Ah, Jacques. You are so smart and so wise for your years. But you’re drowning your talents in jealousy and hatred. It’s no way to live, mon petit. It will eat up all the goodness and love inside you and leave you empty and alone. You must forgive them, son. The murder of Con Delancey was only one act by one pathetic individual. The Broussard name is a proud one, but it is not worth the ruination of your life. You can be the better man.

“I’m sorry, Papi,” Jack muttered. “I can never be as good a man as you were.”

Standing, Jack locked his briefcase and slipped into the bedroom and lay down beside Cara Lynn, whose back was turned. For a few seconds, he lay and watched her sleep. She was so beautiful, with her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted.

As he’d thought earlier at the reception, she really was one of the most genuine people he’d ever met. Her eyes were always clear and blue, her expression was always open and trusting. He sometimes felt guilty for deceiving her. But it had been the perfect ruse. After all, she was a Delancey, and the Delanceys had ruined his grandfather’s life.

As the thoughts flitted drowsily through his mind, his gaze traced the flowing line of her shoulder and torso where the moonlight danced off her skin. He admired the curve of her hips and imagined the shadow centered between them and felt himself harden with desire. He closed his eyes deliberately and turned over, putting his back to hers.

As he did, the bedclothes rustled. After a second, she slid her arm under his and rested her hand on his flat belly. The muscles there contracted when her warm fingers splayed against his skin and the arousal he’d almost managed to quell rose up again.

Desperately, afraid she might decide to slide her hand lower and coax him into early morning sex, he wrapped her hand in his.

“What time is it?” she asked drowsily.

“Five thirty or so,” he said.

“Have you been up all night?”

He nodded. “Told you, I had some plans to go over, but I don’t have to go in early today, so I’ll have plenty of time to take a nap after you leave.”

“Well, in that case...” she murmured in a low voice. At the same time she leaned forward and kissed his bare shoulder.

He grimaced, but he turned onto his back and held up his arm so she could slide into his embrace and rest her head in the little hollow between his neck and shoulder. “I’m way too tired,” he said.

She chuckled and the sound of bells filled his ears. “That’s disappointing. Maybe next time you’ll think twice about staying up all night,” she whispered, then nipped at his ear lobe.

The gentle bite startled him and he jumped, which made her laugh harder. He flipped over on top of her hands, then held them in one of his while he tickled her sides.

“Jack, don’t!” she cried breathlessly, amid giggling laughter. “I thought you were too—tired.”

“Don’t what?” he said, slowing down the tickles and allowing them to become caresses. “Don’t do this?” he whispered as he slid his hand down her flat belly to caress her. “Or this?” he whispered, pushing into her with a gentle finger.

“Oh—” She wrapped her hand around his wrist, but not to stop him; she pressed his hand down and arched against it.

Jack felt her readiness and entered her, doing his best to stay disconnected, to keep the coupling casual, but that was never easy with Cara Lynn. She lifted her head to kiss him. As soon as her lips touched his, as soon as he felt her tongue along the seam of his mouth, he reciprocated, cursing himself for being so weak he couldn’t resist the person he’d targeted to pay for destroying his grandfather’s life.

* * *

PAUL GUILLAME LAY awake and watched the purple glow grow lighter in the sky. He felt as though he hadn’t slept a wink all night. After seeing Betty Delancey’s bestowal of the Guillame fortune on the sweet princess of the Delancey clan, Paul had felt an urge to break one of the expensive bottles of champagne and use its sharp, rough edges to rip all their throats out.

His frustration was that the people whose throats he most wanted to cut were already dead. His Aunt Lilibelle, for one.

She’d yanked him free of the harsh ruling of juvenile court when he was seventeen and raised him as her own, and he’d worshiped her as much as he’d hated her husband, Con. She’d always promised him that he would have her journals. Promised that even after she died, her best friend, Con’s sister, Claire, would keep them safe for him.

But years later, when Cara Lynn graduated from high school, she’d been presented with the journals by her mother, who told her that Grandmother Lilibelle had wanted her to have them. Paul protested, but when he saw the first journal, the inscription inside the cover read To Cara Lynn, in his beloved Aunt Lili’s flowing, decorative hand.

He’d never dreamed that Lili would betray him, not after taking him in to rear along with her own two sons. Not after all the times he’d comforted her when Con was photographed in the company of other women. Not after everything Paul had done for her and everything she’d done for him. They’d always protected each other, and they’d sworn that they always would.

And now, once again he felt the sting of Lili’s betrayal. Her last journal, the one that could destroy the Delancey family, had also gone to Cara Lynn along with the Guillame tiara, worth so much it was generally referred to as priceless.

As fascinated as he had always been with the tiara, he wasn’t concerned about it. There was an unreal quality about jewels that large. Plus, what good would having the tiara do if he couldn’t sell it?

Still, although he was terrified at what someone might find in Lili’s last journal, it was some comfort that none of the Delanceys had gotten their hands on it, either. He’d felt a thrill almost as satisfying as a climax when the lights had gone off and people had started shouting and panicking. The seemingly superhuman Delanceys had been as helpless as ordinary people in the face of the sudden, temporary blackout that lasted for only a few minutes until the emergency generator had kicked on.

But the idea that nobody in the room could see, or know what was happening or who was causing it, had given him a particular thrill. Then when the emergency lights came on and the table was empty—the journal and the tiara gone, he nearly went over the edge.

It had taken every ounce of self-control he had to keep from literally rubbing his palms together with glee. The thief had walked into the Delancey mansion and walked out—or run out—with the journal and the tiara right under the noses of the Delanceys.

But the most exciting thing of all, precisely because he’d been watching Cara Lynn like a hawk all evening, and had made sure his eyes were on her and no one else when the lights came on, was that she had covered something with her hand just before the lights went out. Something white and flat, like a sheet of paper or an envelope.

Once the lights were back on, whatever the bit of white had been, it had disappeared as if it had never been there. Three Delancey men were hovering over her, and her husband was standing on a chair, apparently trying to get a good look at the thief.

Paul had kept his eyes on Cara Lynn, but whatever she had found in the journal, she must have secreted it in her purse.

Now, as he picked up the tumbler of bourbon and water he’d left on the nightstand the night before, and drained it, he let his imagination play with what it could be. The most obvious answer was a letter from Lilibelle Guillame to Cara Lynn. But what would Aunt Lili have said to a child who was barely a teenager when she’d died? Congratulations. Hope you enjoy the nice presents? Paul didn’t know, but he was damned sure going to find out.

He swallowed the last of the watery bourbon and felt its warmth spread through his insides. The evening had ended better than he could have hoped, for the most part.

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