“You wanted me to come,” he said, his gaze locking with hers.

A tiny nod, then the words, “I needed you to.”

Needed. He hadn’t needed a woman since he was twenty. He didn’t need now. He could leave. Could walk out the door, get in his car and drive away as if nothing had ever happened. As if it might not kill him.

He didn’t need to stay.

But he wanted to.

Another gust of wind rustled through the house, stirring his hair. She raised her hand as if to brush it back but hesitated, her fingers unsteady between them. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t look at anything but her fingers, couldn’t want anything but her fingers on him. Stroking him. Holding him. Arousing him…

And finally, finally, she touched him. Her fingertips brushed his hair, something his mother and grandmother had done dozens of times since he was a child, simple, innocent.

And so damn intimate that he hurt with it.

Dear Reader,

When Robbie Calloway first appeared in my head, I wasn’t thinking about making him a hero. He was spoiled, arrogant, lazy and obnoxious—not exactly the commitment-worthy, true-love type. On the contrary, when Anamaria Duquesne came along, I knew she was heroine material. I just never intended for Robbie to be her perfect match. As so often happens when I write, the characters surprised me. They knew they were meant for each other even if I didn’t.

But that’s the cool thing about falling in love, isn’t it? Two people can appear on the surface to have nothing in common, but deep down inside, they share the kind of connection that…well, that romance novels are made of. Anamaria calls it destiny. I call it happily ever after.

I hope Scandal in Copper Lake brings some sizzle to your February!

Marilyn

USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

Scandal in Copper Lake
Marilyn Pappano

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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MARILYN PAPPANO

has spent most of her life growing into the person she was meant to be, but isn’t there yet. She’s been blessed by family—her husband, their son, his lovely wife and a grandson who is almost certainly the most beautiful and talented baby in the world—and friends, along with a writing career that’s made her one of the luckiest people around. Her passions, besides those already listed, include the pack of wild dogs who make their home in her house, fighting the good fight against the weeds that make up her yard, killing the creepy-crawlies that slither out of those weeds and, of course, anything having to do with books.

To Robert, my own connection, destiny and

happily-ever-after. Here’s to the next thirty years.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 1

Anamaria Duquesne slowed to a stop at the intersection and gazed up at the street sign. When Mama Odette had told her she would be living on Easy Street in Copper Lake, Georgia, she’d taken the words for symbolism. Mama Odette liked symbolism.

But her grandmother hadn’t been striving for some deeper meaning. The street really was named Easy, though it was clearly a place where some hard living went on. For every streetlamp that glowed in the night, another two were burned out. The street was narrow and lacked shoulders but dipped into ditches that filled with water when it rained. Trees and bushes grew thick, and grass was sparse. The ten houses she passed before reaching the end of the street hadn’t seen a new coat of paint in her lifetime. The cars were old, and a couple of scroungy-looking dogs stretched to the end of their chains to watch as she pulled into the last driveway.

She sat for a moment, studying the scene in the headlights’ beams. There was only one tree in the front, a magnificent live oak that shaded the entire front lawn. On the sides, the grass had long since surrendered to weeds that were thigh-high. The house was square, not large, but big enough for a mother and her daughter.

A screened porch stretched across the front; she knew from memory that the door opened into a central hall. On the left was the living room and, on the right, a bedroom. At the rear, there was a kitchen and another bedroom. A bathroom separated the two bedrooms.

This was the house where Anamaria had lived the first five years of her life. Just her and her mama, and a black puppy named Ebony. Ebony had made the move to Savannah with Anamaria. Her mama had not.

Despite the warm spring night, a chill crept across Anamaria’s skin. She cut the engine and climbed out of the car, pausing to listen, smell, remember. She heard tree frogs, whip-poor-wills, a night train on the not-too-distant tracks. A faraway dog barking, an answering bark, a car. She smelled dampness from the nearby river, the lush new growth in the woods that backed the house, the faint scents of decay, despair…hopelessness.

And she remembered…very little. Climbing the live oak. Helping with her mother’s flower garden. Playing with her mama as if they were both children.

Glory Duquesne had been little more than a child when she’d given birth to her first child at sixteen. This led to her dropping out of school, following the path with men and motherhood that Mama Odette had taken, and every other Duquesne woman before them. She had been beautiful—not just a daughter’s memory but verified by photographs—with café-au-lait skin, coarse black hair, eyes as brown as the earth and a smile that could stop a man in his tracks.

It’s a curse, Mama Odette said. Duquesne women love well and long and unwisely, and we never marry. But we make beautiful daughters. It was hard to tell with her whether It’s a curse meant an actual curse. Mama Odette believed in the old ways, in evil and curses and The Sight and atonement. She’d supported first her own babies, then her grandbaby, by telling fortunes, offering healing and charms and advice.

Taking two suitcases from the trunk, Anamaria made her way across the yard and climbed creaky steps to the porch. There were tears in the screens, along with enough rust to obscure the view. She crossed to the door, fumbled with the lock, then stepped inside and flipped the light switch. She’d called ahead to the power company, so light illuminated the hallway.

For a time she stood just inside the door, anticipation—fear?—tightening her lungs. Then she drew a breath. She’d expected something. Some flood of memories. Some sense of Mama. Some feeling of horror. But nothing came. The few memories she’d already examined were it.

Thanks to the cleaning service she’d hired, the house smelled of furniture polish and wood soap. Twenty-three years of abandonment had been scrubbed away, leaving the rooms spotless but shabby. The wallpaper was faded, the furniture outdated, the linoleum worn. The metal kitchen cabinets were fifty years or older, but the refrigerator and stove were in working order. There was no dishwasher and no microwave, but she didn’t mind.

Walking along the hall, she wished for a memory, a whisper, a ghost. But talking to the dead was Mama Odette’s strength. Those who’d passed ignored Anamaria as thoroughly as the living ignored them. They dismissed her, finding her unworthy of their endless supply of time.

She stopped in the doorway of her old room but didn’t venture inside. There was one other memory tied to this small, dark, unwelcoming room, of her five-year-old self sobbing in bed, terrified by the first vision she’d ever seen. If she stepped across the threshold, she might hear the faint echoes, feel the faint shudders, hear her own hysterical words. She’s in the water. Mama’s in the water.

Maybe she’d cross the threshold sometime. But not tonight.

She backtracked the few feet to the bathroom: sink, toilet, tub, leaky shower. The last room was Mama’s bedroom. Three windows each on the outside walls. Iron bed frame, walnut veneer dresser, oak veneer night table. Faded paint. Empty closet.

After Mama Odette had moved Anamaria to her house in Savannah, Auntie Lueena and her daughters had packed up only the personal belongings from this house—the clothing, the toys, the mementos. The furniture, lacking value, had stayed. Lueena had broached the subject of selling the place, but Mama Odette had refused. It wasn’t theirs to sell; it belonged to Anamaria.

She smiled thinly. A shabby old house on Easy Street. A few good memories, one truly horrific one. Not much of a legacy for Glory.

No, she corrected herself as she lifted one suitcase onto the dresser top and opened it. Glory’s legacy was her children: Lillie, who’d gone to live with her father’s people when she was a baby. Jass, who’d done the same three years later. Anamaria, whose father remained a mystery.

And the newborn infant who’d died when her mother had.

She unpacked everything she’d brought—clothing, toiletries, dishes, groceries—then made the bed, changed into a nightgown and sat cross-legged on the bed with an ancient wooden chest in front of her.

The box was built of tropical wood, heavily carved with symbols and words in another language. Duquesne women loved unhampered by taboos. Race had never mattered to them; the blood and beliefs of Anamaria’s male ancestors ran far and wide.

Love was all that mattered to Duquesne women. Hot, passionate, greedy, breath-stealing love.

Glory had excelled at that kind of love. Lillie’s father had been the first true love of her life, followed by Jass’s father. Did Mama love my daddy? Anamaria had once asked, and Mama Odette had assured her she did. But she didn’t even know who he was, Anamaria had protested.

But she loved him, chile. Your mama loved every man in her life just like he was the onliest one.

Nerves dancing on edge, Anamaria rubbed her fingers over the carved lid. Family history said the chest had been a wedding gift to Lucia Duquesne, filled with gems and gold coins by her lover. Come the wedding day, though, Lucia had disappeared, the chest with her. Now it held part of Anamaria’s family history. Mementos of the years she’d lived in this house with Mama. Memories she couldn’t retrieve from their hiding places in her head.

She opened the filigreed gold latch, hesitated, then folded it back into place. She would delve into the chest’s mysteries, but not tonight. She was too unsettled. She needed to locate her center of peace before she lifted the lid on her greatest love, her greatest loss.

Rising, she placed the chest in the darkest corner of the closet. For good measure, she pulled an empty suitcase over to block it from sight, then returned to the bed.

It was early for sleep, but she’d begun a long journey that day, longer than the one hundred and twenty-five miles between Savannah and Copper Lake suggested. She had an even longer road ahead of her.

She was going to find out everything she could about her mother’s life in this town.

And her death.

Office hours at Robbie Calloway’s law practice were nine to five for his secretary, one to five for his paralegal and pretty much whenever he couldn’t avoid showing up for him. On the second Tuesday in April, that was eleven o’clock, and then only because he had a last-minute appointment.

Ursula Benton, his second cousin’s mother-in-law, looked up when he walked in at five till. With glasses perched on the end of her nose and her fingertips on the computer keyboard, it appeared she was hard at work. But Robbie knew it was more likely that she was chatting online about her passion in life, cross-stitching, than doing anything work-related.

“He’s in your office,” she said. “Here are your messages.”

He accepted a handful of yellow slips. Except for a call from his mother, Sara, the rest were from attorneys or clients. He tried to keep his client load to the bare minimum needed to justify an office and two employees. Law wasn’t a career for him; it was an interesting diversion. Thanks to a family who’d always had good fortune, he didn’t need the income. And unlike his brothers, Rick, Mitch and Russ, he wasn’t all that enamored with real work.

However, Harrison Kennedy, who was waiting in the office, did require real work of Robbie from time to time. After the Calloways, the Kennedys were the wealthiest and most influential family in this part of Georgia. Harrison had been friends with Robbie’s father, Gerald, until his death, and his wife, Lydia, remained Sara’s closest friend.

Harrison was standing at the window, gazing out over the Gullah River, a glass of whiskey in hand. Robbie glanced at the brownish liquid, his mouth watering, before helping himself to a bottle of water and going to stand at the opposite end of the window.

“A good day to be out there with a fishing pole and a cooler of beer.” Harrison stared out the window a moment longer before turning to face him. “I didn’t get you out of bed too early, did I?”

Robbie ignored the sarcasm. “Nah, I’m always up in time for lunch.”

Harrison believed in long hours and hard work. It was how he made his fortune, he often declared. Truth was, he’d inherited his fortune, just like Gerald, and he’d added to it by marrying into an even bigger one. Granted, he’d probably doubled it since then, but making more money wasn’t so hard when he already had plenty.

“What can I do for you?” Robbie asked.

Harrison picked up a folder from the credenza, removed a page and slapped it down between them. “I want to know everything you can find out about her.”

It wasn’t a great photo, taken by the security camera at the gate to the Kennedy property and printed on plain white paper, but it was enough to make any red-blooded man take a second look. The woman was beautiful, exotic. Eyes the color of cocoa; skin the color of cocoa in milk; lush lips; a long, lovely throat; sleek black hair. She wore an orange top, chunky earrings and an air of self-assurance.

Underneath the photo, someone had scrawled a few bits of information: Anamaria Duquesne. Glory Duquesne. There was a date and a time—yesterday afternoon—and a description of a car, along with the tag number.

“Who is she?”

Harrison pointed at the page. “Anamaria Duquesne. Glory Duquesne’s daughter.”

There was something about the way his eyes were moving, the way he suddenly shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He thrust his hands into his pants pockets, a habit he deplored—Ruins the line of a good suit—then pulled them out again.

Robbie waited. He was very good at doing nothing while seconds ticked past.

Harrison tugged at his tie, then exhaled. “You know Liddy is a smart woman. A sensible one, most of the time.”

Robbie nodded.

Harrison tugged at his tie again. “She has a thing for…an interest in…you know. Weird stuff. Psychics. Talking to the dead. Fortune-telling.”

Though he hid it, Robbie couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d said pornography or drugs. Lydia wasn’t just sensible; she was about as no-nonsense as they came. She had an abiding faith in God, country and family, right and wrong, good and evil, logic and bunk. She didn’t trifle with anything the least bit, well, trifling. And she was into what Robbie’s last ex fondly called “woo-woo”?

“It started when the baby died,” Harrison went on. “She was so down. Everything had gone so well—the pregnancy, the labor, the delivery. And three hours later…She blamed herself. She didn’t cry. She didn’t let go. She just sort of disappeared inside herself. Then she started seeing that woman—Glory Duquesne.

“Your uncle Cyrus checked her out for me at the time. She’d never been married. She had three children by three men. She didn’t have custody of the older two girls, just that one.” Harrison gestured toward the photo. “She lived on the wrong side of town and made a living taking money from people who were vulnerable. She was a con artist, preying on the weak, and after the baby died, God, was Liddy weak.”

Lydia and Harrison had lost their only child over twenty years ago, which would explain why Robbie had never heard of the Duquesnes. A lot of people came and went in twenty years, and in the Copper Lake of that era, they kept to their proper places while they were there. It was doubtful that he’d ever crossed paths with either Glory Duquesne or her daughter.

Harrison’s hand shook as he drained the whiskey, then set the glass down with a thud. “I knew the woman was a phony, but she wasn’t charging any more than the doctor whose best idea was to medicate Liddy into a fog. And she seemed to help Liddy find some peace, so I was more than happy to pay for their once-a-week sessions. And then, about a year after Liddy started seeing her, the woman…”

His jaw tightened, and he bit out the last words. “She died.”

“How?” Robbie asked, gazing again at the photograph. Anamaria Duquesne couldn’t have been more than six, maybe seven years old at the time, a little older than he’d been when his father died. He’d hardly known his old man, though, and Sara had made sure he’d never missed him. Had there been a father to take in Anamaria? Family somewhere who wanted her?

“Accident, the police said. She went for a walk along the river at night, fell and hit her head. They found her body, snagged on some branches, half in the water.” Harrison reached for the glass again and looked surprised that it was empty. His tone turned grimmer. “She was nine months pregnant. Coroner said the fall caused her to go into labor and that the baby…His best guess was that the baby was washed away by the river. It was never found.”

“God.” No wonder Robbie hadn’t heard the story before. He’d been a typical kid, outside running wild most of the time, and his only use for the Copper Lake Clarion or a news broadcast had been the scores for his favorite teams. A pregnant mother dying alone in the night, with her newborn baby swept away to drown in the river, was definitely something his mother wouldn’t have discussed in front of him.

But all that was history. “What’s happening now?”

“Liddy got a call yesterday from the girl. Said she was in town and had a message for Liddy and could she come over to deliver it. It was some mumbo jumbo—something about a white-haired man and flowers.”

“Did she ask for money?”

“No. And Liddy didn’t offer her any.” Harrison’s mouth took on a pinched look. “That time. But she’s got an appointment to see her tomorrow morning. The girl’s promised another message.”

Like mother, like daughter. Anamaria had been just a child when her mother died. Had she observed that much of Glory’s scams in that short time, or had someone else taken over her education after Glory’s death?

Robbie moved to sit on the edge of his desk. “I can recommend a good private investigator.”

“What can a private investigator do that you can’t?”

Nothing, as far as gathering information went. Robbie had access to the same databases, and while he wasn’t the most Internet-savvy person around, his paralegal was. And he had an in that most PIs didn’t: Tommy Maricci, his best bud since they’d given each other black eyes on the first day of kindergarten, was a detective with the Copper Lake Police Department. Granted, Tommy’s help would be bending the law more than a little, but it was for a good cause.

“I’ve never had any experience at surveilling or following anyone. I’m not exactly covert when I go out.”

“I don’t want you to be subtle,” Harrison said. “I want her to know she’s being watched. I want her to understand that if she says one thing to upset Liddy, she’ll pay dearly. Find out who she is, what she’s up to, why she’s here…and then put the fear of God into her so that she goes away.”

Robbie smiled thinly. He could do that. He might be only a part-time lawyer, but he gave his all to every case. There was nothing sweeter than that moment when he knew he’d prevailed, except the moment when his opponent knew it, too.

“Can I talk to Lydia?”

Harrison didn’t hesitate. “No.”

“But—”

“No. Leave her out of this.”

That might be hard to do, considering that without Lydia, there was no this. But Robbie nodded in agreement. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

Harrison nodded, slapped him on the back affectionately then left the office.

Robbie sat down at his desk, sliding the computer keyboard closer, then braced the phone between his ear and shoulder while he signed online.

A few hours later, he leaned back in the chair and watched a boat pass on the river. It hadn’t taken long in this computer-centric age to learn pretty much all there was to know about Anamaria Duquesne. She was twenty-eight years old. Lived on Queen Street in Savannah. Had been raised by her grandmother, Odette Duquesne, after her mother’s death. Worked part-time at her aunt Lueena Duquesne’s restaurant a few blocks from her home. Also worked part-time telling fortunes.

She had two credit cards, paid in full every month, and had earned enough points to buy herself a round-trip flight to anywhere in the world. She was down to the last four payments on her car. She’d taken a few classes at the local community college—nothing toward a degree, just Spanish, art, cooking. She’d been arrested a few times for her phony-seer act, but the charges had been dropped. She’d never been sued, gotten a traffic ticket or applied for a passport. She had never been married, had no children, and her father was listed on her birth certificate as Unknown.

He knew a lot, but he’d learned nothing, really. The important questions—why she’d come to Copper Lake, what she wanted with Liddy Kennedy—could be answered only by her.

He had her phone number, but he didn’t bother calling. He also had her local address. The only property she owned besides her car was a sixty-five-year-old house at the end of Easy Street.

He said goodbye to Ursula, then took the stairs to the garage below. He’d bought the building in part for its location on River Road—Copper Lake’s main drag—and in part for its view of the Gullah River, but mostly for the private garage on the ground level. He’d put too damn many hours and too damn much money into restoring his ’57 Vette to mint condition to park it just anywhere. The engine gave a finely tuned roar as he backed out of the space, then turned onto River Road.

Just north of downtown was a neighborhood of pricey old homes, each sitting on an acre or two of stately trees and manicured lawn. Holigan Creek, curving west to empty into the river, formed the boundary between that neighborhood, where Russ’s wife, Jamie, had once lived, and the poor white neighborhood where Rick’s wife, Amanda, had grown up. The lots were smaller there, the houses more cramped, the yards shaggier. A marshy patch separated that area from the poor black neighborhood, which had only one way in or out. Tillman Avenue led off to a half-dozen other streets, each with its own collection of sorry, run-down houses.

The Duquesne house was the last one in the neighborhood. Easy Street dead-ended at its driveway, and fifty yards separated it from the homes on either side. There was no paint on the weathered siding, and the roof showed spots where shingles had blown away, but other than that, there was a sturdiness about the house.

He parked behind Anamaria Duquesne’s two-door sedan and got out to the accompaniment of dogs barking. There was no sign of anyone around, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched, both from the houses behind him and from the one ahead.

He was proven right about the latter when he opened the screen door at the top of the steps. Anamaria sat in an old wooden rocker, one leg propped over the chair arm, the other foot planted on the floor. She wore a sleeveless dark orange blouse and a long full skirt in eye-popping orange, red and yellow print. The extra fabric was tucked between her legs, giving some semblance of modesty, and it rustled as she kept the chair in motion with the foot on the floor.

Her hair was up that afternoon, baring that long, lovely neck, and her lids were heavy, as if the heat of the day and the peace of the porch had lulled her someplace else. But that, Robbie thought, was an act. She was as aware of him as he was of her.

After a moment, the rocking stopped and she let her leg slide down. Both feet were bare except for a coat of deep red polish on the toenails. No toe ring. No bracelet circling her delicate ankle.

“Robbie Calloway,” she said at last.

“How did you know? Oh, my God, you must be psychic,” he said drily. Crossing the porch, he sat in another rocker that creaked with each backstroke.

She smiled at his response. “It’s been a long time since you’ve gone anywhere in Copper Lake without being recognized. After all, you’re not just a Calloway. You’re one of the Calloways. You, your brothers, your mother—you’re considered the best of the best.”

“And you know this…?”

“I’m psychic, remember? And I read the paper. I talk to people.” She leaned forward and extended her right hand. “I’m—”

“Anamaria Duquesne. You scam people for a living.” He took her hand as he spoke and felt her muscles tighten at his remark. She didn’t try to pull away, though, even if he was holding on far too long for a handshake. Her skin was soft and warm, and it made him wonder if she felt like that all over. She was gorgeous with her clothes on. He could only imagine how stunning she would be with them off.

When he let go of her hand, she sat back and crossed one leg over the other. “You know what they call ten lawyers at the bottom of the sea? A good start. You have some nerve, criticizing what I do for a living.” Her voice was soft, fluid, the accent pure coastal Georgia. It was a voice that could quiet a cranky child, soothe a troubled soul or arouse a man until he hurt. If she ever took her clairvoyant nonsense to the radio, every man within listening range, believer or not, would tune in just to hear that voice.

“I understand you used to live here,” he said.

“A long time ago.”

“Why are you here now?”

She smiled faintly. “Because I used to live here. Why are you here?” Before he could answer, she went on. “Let me guess. Harrison Kennedy asked you to check me out.”

“Do you blame him?”

Her brows arched as she shrugged. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“You have an arrest record.”

Another shrug. “You would have one, too, if you weren’t a Calloway, and for more serious charges than my own.”

Robbie couldn’t argue the fact with her. He and his brothers had gotten into a lot of trouble when they were kids. There was no doubt that the family name, as well as Granddad, had kept them out of jail on more than one occasion.

“What do you call what you do?” he continued.

“A gift. Sometimes, not so much.”

He gestured. “Are you a psychic? Seer? Reader? Palmist? Do you have a sign outside your house in Savannah that says Sister Anamaria Sees All, with an evil eye and a palm, a moon and some stars?”

“I’m an advisor. No signs.”

“Then how do your customers find you?”

“Everyone in Savannah knows where to find Mama Odette’s girl.” Uncrossing her legs, she stood gracefully. Her skirt flowed around her in psychedelic ripples. “Would you like a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade? I use Auntie Lueena’s recipe. I’m sure you know who she is.”

“Sure. Why not?”

She went to the door, opened it, then turned back to give him a devilish smile. “And I promise, Robbie Calloway, I won’t doctor it with anything. Healing or otherwise.”

It took only a moment to fill two glasses with ice, another to remove the pitcher from the refrigerator. Balancing it all, she carried it through the quiet house and onto the porch. The pitcher was already sweating when she set it on a small table, then filled the glasses.

“What is it exactly that Mr. Kennedy wants to know about me?” She handed one glass to Robbie, careful not to touch him, then sat down again in Mama’s rocker, cradling her own glass between her palms.

“Who you are. Why you’re here. What you’re up to.”

“You know who I am. Do I need an explanation for coming to stay at a house I’ve owned for twenty-three years? As for what I’m up to…I’m resting. Taking a break from my regular life. Retreating.” After a long drink of lemonade, she went on. “I suspect Mr. Kennedy’s primary interest is what I want with Miss Lydia.”

“What do you want with Miss Lydia?”

“For me, nothing. My mother had a message for her that I agreed to pass on.”

Skepticism crossed Robbie’s face. “You talk to your dead mother?”

Ignoring the sting of pain deep inside, Anamaria shook her head. “I don’t have that ability. She speaks to my grandmother.” As a small child, Anamaria would have been afraid to suddenly hear Mama’s voice again. As a teenager, she would have given a lot to hear her say one more time, Everything’s gonna be all right, baby doll. As an adult, she felt snubbed. She hadn’t asked for any sort of abilities, but if she had to have something, why couldn’t it have been the one gift that would allow her to connect with the mother she missed so desperately?

“What are your abilities?”

She smiled the aloof, mysterious sort of smile that customers always responded to. “I can read your palm, your tea leaves or your cards. I can look into your future and tell you something so vague it could be taken a dozen ways. I can gaze into the crystal ball or throw the bones or study your astral charts and give you information so startlingly imprecise that it could apply to anything or nothing at all.”

“So you’re a total fraud.” He grinned. He was handsome enough when his mouth was set in a grim line, but when he grinned…That flash of blinding-white teeth made his dark hair darker, his blue eyes bluer, his bronzed skin damn near lustrous.

A warning sounded distantly in her mind. Men and love were the downfall of the Duquesne women, together more dangerous than anything else they might face. So far, she had managed to avoid feeling passionately about anyone, but she was always on watch, always drawing away.

But if any man was safe for her, it was this one. Robbie Calloway was the most elite of an elite group. He was white, very socially aware, raised with two hundred years of teaching that the races didn’t mingle. His family, his church, his country club, his office, his circle of friends—all white. He’d dated enough women to populate a sorority house or two—all white. He wasn’t a threat to Anamaria.

Though he might make her a threat to herself.

“Did you take time from your busy workday just to check me out?”

His smile was wry. “Yeah, I lead a busy life. Twenty hours a week in the office is about ten too many for my tastes.”

“I thought you were a successful lawyer.” She hadn’t lied about reading the newspaper; reading back issues of the Clarion had been one of the first things she’d done once she’d decided to make this journey. His name appeared on a regular basis, as much for professional activities as for social ones.

“I am successful. I just don’t see the point of expending too much time or energy at it.”

“It’s not your passion?”

He drained his lemonade, then set the glass next to the pitcher. She asked with a gesture if he’d like more; he shook his head. “I feel passionate about some of my cases, but the job itself? No. Is scamming—sorry, I mean advising—people your passion?”

“One of them.” She loved her work, her family, her job at Auntie Lueena’s diner. The only thing that could make her life better was having her mother and baby sister in it.

“What are the others?”

“That’s an impertinent question to ask someone you’ve just met.”

Robbie shrugged, his deep-green shirt rippling over nice muscles. “What was the message for Lydia Kennedy?”

The change of subject caught Anamaria off guard, though she hid it. “That’s Miss Lydia’s business. It’s not my place to share.”

“If I ask her, she’ll tell me.”

“So ask her.”

He studied her a moment, then slowly smiled. “I’ll do that.”

She doubted Lydia would have any qualms about sharing. The message had been innocent enough: good wishes from a white-haired man who loved to garden, along with a reminder to look out for his prized irises. It really had come from Glory, through Mama Odette, though no doubt Robbie was skeptical. He was a lawyer who believed in evidence, hard facts. Anamaria was a dreamer who took many things on faith. His feet were firmly planted in his reality; she was adrift in her own.

“How long will you be staying in Copper Lake?”

“I don’t know. Maybe long enough for Mr. Kennedy to finance another toy for you.” She waved one hand languidly in the direction of the Corvette. Automobiles were transportation to her, nothing more. Mama Odette had never owned a car or learned to drive. Even now, closing in on seventy, she preferred her own two feet for getting around. That was why the good Lord gave them to her, wasn’t it?

Anamaria prayed the good Lord would let her grandmother continue getting around. She was having a hard time recovering from this last stint in the hospital. Her heart was weak, the cardiologist said. Maybe not so much, Mama Odette had declared with a wink. There’s still livin’ left to do. Fortunes to tell, places to go, people to meet.

Robbie looked offended at her description of his car. “That’s the sweetest car this side of Atlanta. She has 327 cubes at 365 horsepower and tops out at 140 miles per hour.”

The words meant nothing to her. Duquesne women weren’t mechanically inclined, but they had a knack for finding men who were. “A high-performance toy. It won’t take you anywhere my Honda won’t go.”

“No, but I’ll get there in style,” he said with a grin as he rose from the rocker. It creaked in protest a few times—at the movement? Or his leaving?

Anamaria stood, as well, and walked to the screen door with him. She was tall, five-ten in her bare feet, but he stood a few inches taller. He moved with the ease of someone who’d always known his place in the world. He did wondrous things for khakis and a polo shirt, and he smelled rich and sexy and very, very classy. He was most definitely what Auntie Lueena would call a fine catch—with four daughters, Lueena was ever hopeful that one would break the curse and marry—and yet he remained single.

It wasn’t Anamaria’s place to wonder why.

“Thank you for the lemonade and your time,” he said as he passed through the doorway. On the second step he turned back, the charming smile still in place but absent from his eyes. “Watch your step with Lydia. She’s like family to me, and you don’t want to go messing with my family.”

Anamaria leaned against the doorjamb, one arm outstretched to hold the screen door open. “You don’t want to go messing with Miss Lydia, either. She knows what she wants and how to get it.”

He raised one hand as if to touch the strand of hair that had fallen loose from its clasp and now brushed her shoulder, then, only inches away, lowered it again. “You know what you want, too, don’t you? And you know how to get it. Luckily, I know how to stop you.”

With those words, he took the remaining steps two at a time, strode across the dirt and got behind the wheel of his expensive little car. She watched him back out in a tight turn, then accelerate down Easy Street before she closed the door and returned to the rocker.

Robbie Calloway didn’t have a clue what she wanted. Like most skeptics, his distrust of her abilities also meant a distrust of her. She was a fraud in his eyes, not just as an advisor but as a person.

Her business was her business. What she’d said to Lydia, why she’d come to Copper Lake, everything she did…in the end, she bore sole responsibility for her actions, and she carried no regrets.

When she returned to Savannah, she would still have no regrets.

Especially not one named Robbie.

Chapter 2

Much of Copper Lake’s downtown area showed its two-hundred-year-old roots: red bricks softened to a rosy hue, dimpled glass, wood glowing with a well-deserved patina. At the heart was the square, manicured grass bordered with flowers, war monuments and walkways leading to and from the bandstand that anchored the park.

Everywhere Anamaria looked, she saw beauty, prosperity…and the Calloway name—law offices, a construction company, doctors’ and dentists’ offices, investment and accounting firms, retail shops. Robbie Calloway’s office was on River Road, the building only a few years old but built to blend in with its vintage neighbors.

Nice space for a man who thought ten hours a week in the office just fine. She worked sixty hours a week or more and would never own a place like that or a car like his. But she knew all too well that money didn’t buy happiness and neither did things. People were the only thing that mattered, and all the money in the world couldn’t buy the good ones.

Then she thought of the Civil War monument she’d just passed and amended that thought: not anymore. Such places as the Calloway Plantation and Twin Oaks, Lydia Kennedy’s home, had undoubtedly relied on slave labor to do all the jobs that kept the families clothed, fed and wealthy. Slaves such as Ophelia, Harriett, Gussie and Florence Duquesne, their children and their grandchildren.

Turning onto Carolina Avenue, she drove east. A few miles past the town limits sign was Twin Oaks, but she was meeting Lydia in town today. The older woman had suggested they meet at River’s Edge, the centerpiece of downtown. The Greek Revival mansion had undergone an extensive restoration and had been transformed into a beautiful white gem in the midst of an emerald-green lawn, all of it surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence. It was open to the public for tours, parties and weddings, Lydia had told her, but not on Wednesdays. They would have the place to themselves.

But with time to spare, Anamaria bypassed the street that would take her back to River’s Edge. She drove aimlessly, past parks and schools and stores—not the pricey ones downtown but the cheaper, shabbier ones on the outskirts. She located the church she and Glory had attended—a small structure that looked every one of its one hundred forty years in spite of its fresh coat of white paint. She tried to remember using swings on this playground, getting enrolled for kindergarten at that school, shopping for groceries at this market, dressing up in her Sunday best and skipping into the church.

But nothing came. Her five years in Copper Lake had been diminished to a handful of memories.

The last place she searched out was Gullah Park. It was a long, narrow section of land nestled alongside the river just north of downtown. There was a parking lot, a small playground, a handful of concrete picnic tables and a paved trail that followed the riverbank out of sight.

She stopped at the entrance to the lot, her hands clammy, her fingers clenching the steering wheel. This was where her mother’s car had been found that morning, parked all the way at the end. She’d come there to walk, the police had told Mama Odette.

Why? Mama Odette wanted to know. It was silly to get into a car and drive someplace just so you could walk. Not that Glory was above being silly from time to time—her silliness was one of the things Anamaria had loved best about her—but it struck her mother as strange even for her.

Mama Odette wanted to know everything. As she faced the last days of her life, she’d developed a burning need to know about the last days of Glory’s life. The all-too-short time of the baby’s life.

The blare of a horn behind her jerked Anamaria’s gaze to the rearview mirror, where a man waited impatiently for her to move. As she drove on, he turned into the parking lot. She would come back here, get out and walk that trail. Sometimes she had visions, sometimes there were just feelings and sometimes she drew a blank. She hoped she would learn something. She didn’t want to let Mama Odette down.

Back at the square, she found a parking space on the north side of River’s Edge and entered the property through a side gate. Wide steps led to a broad gallery, its floor herringboned-brick, its ceiling painted sky blue. Sturdy wicker chairs, iron benches and wooden rockers were spaced along the porch, with pots of bright geraniums nestled at the base of each massive column.

When she turned the corner at the front of the house, Lydia was standing near the door, gazing at her watch. She looked up at the sound of Anamaria’s footsteps and a welcoming smile crossed her face. “I couldn’t remember whether we’d settled on ten or ten-thirty or if I’d told you the front gate would be locked, but here you are, straight-up ten o’clock. Come on in.”

Like Anamaria’s own house, the doorway opened into a hallway that ran front to back, with rooms opening off each side. Unlike her house, this hallway was fifteen feet wide and provided space for an elaborate staircase that would have done Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara proud. The walls were painted deep red and were a backdrop to forbidding portraits and landscapes in heavy, aged oils.

“Our ancestors were a dour lot, weren’t they?” Lydia remarked as she led the way down the hall.

“Some of them had a right to be.” But not these stern men and women whose narrow gazes followed them. They’d had wealth, influence and people to provide their every need. Ophelia, Harriet, Gussie and Florence had had nothing but their family, their gifts and their love of life—not even their freedom—but in her heart Anamaria knew they’d been the happier of the two groups.

The door at the end of the hall led into a thoroughly modern kitchen with stainless-steel countertops, restaurant-grade appliances and, tucked away near a window, the cozy nook with padded benches that was their destination. A notebook lay open on the table, with snapshots of flowers scattered about. A cup of tea sat on one side; an empty cup waited on the other.

“I stopped at Ellie’s Deli on the way and picked up some sweets,” Lydia said, moving the box from the nearest counter to the tabletop. Inside were a dozen miniatures—tiny croissants, sticky buns no bigger than a golf ball, petit fours and pecan tartlets.

After they’d each chosen a pastry, Lydia sat back, her gaze settling on Anamaria’s face. “You don’t speak with those who have passed, do you?”

“No. That’s my grandmother’s gift.”

“And when she received that message from Mr. John—that’s what we all called Grandfather—you came all this way to deliver it?”

“I was planning the trip anyway. I imagine that’s why Mr. John chose to speak to Mama Odette.” If he hadn’t, she would have used the straightforward approach and simply asked to meet with Lydia. But the dead didn’t miss any opportunities, lucky for her.

Lydia gathered the photographs into a neat stack, then set them and the notebook aside. “I’m reworking some of the gardens. Those are notes and pictures from last summer. Harrison says I have fertilizer running through my veins—a gift from Mr. John. I prefer flowers over just about anything.”

But not children…or grandchildren. Anamaria could practically see the longing, dulled now after years of childlessness but still there. Still clinging to her like a distant hope, nearly forgotten.

“Do you volunteer here?” Anamaria asked as she filled her cup from the china teapot, then sniffed the tendrils of steam that drifted up. Chamomile and lavender—Mama Odette’s favorite blend.

“You could say that. I own River’s Edge—or, rather, it owns me. It belonged to the Calloways for generations, then passed into, then out of, my family. When it became available again a few years ago, I bought it, hired out the renovation and have been working on the landscaping myself.”

Lydia refilled her own cup, then breathed deeply of the aroma as Anamaria had done. “Your mother prescribed this for me. At first, she brought it to me in little paper bags, then she showed me how to mix it myself. I have a cup or two every day, and I always think of her.”

Even Anamaria couldn’t make that claim. Days went by when she couldn’t honestly say she’d thought of her mother even once. She’d loved Glory, but she’d done virtually all of her growing up without her. All of the usual significant mother/daughter moments in her life involved Mama Odette or Auntie Lueena.

“I was so stunned when I heard what happened,” Lydia went on, gazing into her cup as if she might read her fortune there. “All I could think was that poor child. She’d done nothing to deserve that. So young, so innocent.”

For a moment, Anamaria thought the poor child meant Glory. She’d been only twenty-seven when she died, and she possessed a childlike enthusiasm and wonder for all that life had to offer. But innocent? Mama Odette claimed she was born knowing more than most women learned by the time they were thirty.

“Did you find another advisor?”

Lydia shook her head. “I was better. Your mother helped me more than I can say. And then…” She shook her head again, then, with a deep breath, changed the subject. “I should warn you that my husband isn’t too happy that I’m meeting with you. He might do something foolishly overprotective.”

“Such as instruct his lawyer to investigate me?” Anamaria asked with a wry smile.

“Oh, Lord. He did the same thing with your mother—asked his lawyer to look into her background. Then it was Cyrus Calloway, my brother-in-law and Robbie’s uncle. We’re practically family, the Kennedys and the Calloways.”

“That’s what Robbie said.”

“So you’ve met him. Don’t let him charm your socks off.”

“I’m immune to charm.”

Lydia wagged one finger in her direction. “Only because the right man hasn’t tried. If I was thirty years younger, I’d take any one of Sara and Gerald’s boys. Though the older three have wives now who would snatch me bald if I even got too close.”

It was easy to see Robbie Calloway charming the socks—and everything else—off most women, but not her. He distrusted her. She had priorities. He thought she was a threat to Lydia. She was very good at guarding her heart. Someday she would experience that hot, passionate, greedy love—all Duquesne women did—but not now. Not here. Most definitely not with him.

“Why were you planning this trip?”

Another quick subject change, but Anamaria wasn’t flustered. She’d known the question would come up, and she’d chosen the simplest, truthful answer. “Curiosity. I’m a year older now than my mother was when she died. I want to see where she lived, to talk to people who knew her. Mama Odette and Auntie Lueena have told me a lot, but I want to hear what other people know that they don’t. I want to know her.”

Lydia nodded sympathetically. “It must have been hard for your grandmother, losing both her daughter and her grandbaby at the same time.”

“It broke her heart.”

“And yours.”

Anamaria nodded. She might not remember much of life with Glory, but she knew it must have been good, because living without her had been hard, even surrounded by family who loved her.

“You were a pretty little girl,” Lydia went on. “I didn’t see you often. Glory usually left you with a neighbor when she came to my house. But a few times, she brought you with her and you played in the garden while we talked. You wore frilly little dresses, and your hair was tied back with a bow. You’d say yes, ma’am and thank you and please just as solemn as could be. I told Glory she was blessed to have such a lovely daughter. And then she got blessed again.”

A lot of people hadn’t seen blessings anywhere around Glory. Instead, they’d seen a stereotype: an uneducated black woman, illegitimate children, no legitimate means of support. But Glory had fit nobody’s stereotype.

“You loved the flowers in my garden, especially the lilies. You have a sister named Lillie, don’t you?”

“I do. And another named Jass.” Lillie was five years older and lived in South Carolina. Jass was two years older and living in Texas. They didn’t miss Glory the way Anamaria did, but they’d never known her the way Anamaria had. They’d been raised by their fathers, by paternal grandmothers and aunts and stepmothers.

“And the baby would have been Charlotte.”

Anamaria looked up, surprised. “Charlotte?”

“Surely you knew that. Glory decided on it about a month before she passed.”

Another of those details that she’d shut out after the shock of seeing her mother dead. She tried the name in her mind: Charlotte Duquesne. My sister, Charlotte. Not just the baby, so generic and impersonal, but Charlotte, with café-au-lait skin, chocolate-colored eyes, wispy black hair and tiny features with the exotic stamp of all her mixed heritages. Having a name made her more real and made her absence sharper, more intense.

“So…” Lydia gazed across the table at her. “Glory used to say that you would follow in her footsteps. She said when you were three, you’d tell her someone was at the door a minute or two before they even stepped onto the porch. She said when you were four, all she had to do was think about fixing meat loaf for dinner, and you’d tell her no in no uncertain terms.”

Anamaria smiled. To this day she couldn’t stomach meat loaf. It was the Thursday special at Auntie Lueena’s diner, making Thursday her regular day off. “I wish I remembered more about her.”

“You were so young,” Lydia murmured. “It was so tragic.”

Before either of them spoke again, the front door closed with a thud. “Miss Lydia? Are you here?”

Robbie Calloway. Anamaria’s muscles tensed. Trust him to find them together; after all, less than twenty-four hours ago, he’d warned her to watch her step with Lydia.

The older woman’s expression remained distant, and her response was absently made. “Back here in the kitchen.” She was still thinking about the tragedy of Glory’s death. Sadness and sorrow tainted the very air around her.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway, then the door swung open and Robbie walked in. Except it wasn’t Robbie, but someone who looked and sounded a great deal like him. One of his brothers, Anamaria realized with relief.

He wore a dusty T-shirt with Calloway Construction stamped across the front, along with faded jeans, heavy work boots and a platinum wedding band on his left hand. He wasn’t quite as handsome as Robbie, but there was an air of blunt honesty about him. What you see is what you get.

Lydia’s smile was warm, motherly, as she reached one hand to him. “I was hoping you’d stop by this morning. I caught one of your people about to dig up my lilies in front yesterday. After the chewing out I gave him, he might not be back.”

“I told you, Miss Lydia, you’ve got to quit putting the fear of God into my subs. They’re just men. They don’t know how to handle a formidable woman like you.”

As Lydia responded with a laugh and a protest, Anamaria sipped her tea and quietly observed Robbie’s brother. He radiated contentment. He loved his wife, she loved him, and they were having a girl in August. They would name her Sara Elizabeth, after their mothers, but he would insist on calling her Angel.

It was so easy to see into some futures. So hard to figure out a thing about her own.

“Russ Calloway, this is Anamaria Duquesne. She’s new in town,” Lydia said.

He nodded politely in Anamaria’s direction. “You’ve met the right person to help you get acquainted. Miss Lydia knows everyone and everything that goes on in this town.”

Lydia smiled modestly. “Not quite…but I’m working at it. And in that spirit, did you come looking for me just to brighten your day?”

“Of course. And to tell you that the landscape guy will be over here at one, so you can scare him instead of his employee.”

She smiled again, looking totally harmless, Anamaria thought, but she would scare the guy.

After Russ left, Lydia said, “Those are the flowers your message was about. Mr. John’s prize lilies. I have an entire bed of them at home, and I’d transplanted some here. That idiot had his shovel in the ground about to uproot them when I stopped him.” Her expression turned serious, and she toyed with the teacup before finally glancing up again. “Do you have…You said there might be…”

“Another message from Mr. John,” Anamaria said smoothly. “He’s concerned about Kent.”

Another harmless message, like the lilies, she thought. But apparently it wasn’t harmless to Lydia. She stiffened, her hand frozen above her teacup, and the color drained from her face. As her hand began to tremble in midair, deep sorrow lined her face.

With a heavy sigh, she busied herself for a moment, straightening photos that were already straight, closing the lid on the pastry box, securing the small tabs that held it shut. Finally she looked at Anamaria. “Kent is my sister’s boy. He’s a Calloway, for all the good it did him. An only child, born to a man whose standards were impossible and a woman too self-absorbed to be any kind of mother. If ever two people were ill-suited to have children, it was Cyrus and Mary. Harrison and I did what we could for the boy, but no matter how much your aunt and uncle love you, it’s still not the same as having your mama and daddy’s love…and that’s all Kent ever wanted.

“Cyrus is dead now. That was no great loss to the world. And Mary still has a home here, but she spends her time traveling. Paying attention to everyone in her life except the ones that count the most. Do you know she didn’t come home when Kent’s son was born?” Her eyes glistened with emotion. “Connor was four years old the first time she saw him. She was in Europe when Kent and Connor’s mother divorced. She was in Asia when he married Lesley, his current wife. Connor will graduate from high school this May, but Mary won’t be there to see it. I hate to speak poorly of my own sister, but…”

But she’d lost the child she loved dearly, while her sister turned her back on her own child. The unfairness of it could cause a saint to turn catty.

“But you and Harrison have been here for Kent. You were here when Connor was born, when Kent divorced, when he married again. You’ll be there at Connor’s graduation.”

Lydia quietly agreed. “We always have been. We always will be.” Again, in one of those changes that Anamaria was beginning to expect, she stood and waited pointedly. “This has been a lovely time, but if I’m going to intimidate that landscape contractor, then I need a little time to get ready for him.”

By the time Anamaria got to her feet, Lydia was already opening the door into the corridor. “Thank you for the pastries, the tea, the conversation.”

At the front entrance, Lydia opened the door, then rested one hand lightly on Anamaria’s arm. “We’ll see each other again soon. And give my best to Robbie.” She nodded, and Anamaria turned to see a familiar figure leaning against the hood of her car. Definitely Robbie, wearing khaki trousers and a pale blue button-down shirt, ankles crossed, hands in his pockets and a hard look on his face.

Her heart rate increased a few beats as she said goodbye to Lydia, then circled around to the side gate. Because of the impending confrontation. Not because he was quite possibly the handsomest man she’d ever known. Not because he might be worth regretting. Simply because he was her adversary.

That was something she couldn’t risk forgetting.

Anamaria moved with the assurance of a woman who knew her body and was comfortable in her skin. She came through the gate, then strolled along the twenty feet of sidewalk that separated them, stopping just out of reach.

Just close enough for him to catch a whiff of her fragrance—exotic, musky, putting him in mind of heat and hunger and long sultry nights. There was nothing exotic about her clothes—a denim skirt that ended a few inches above her knees, a white V-necked shirt, its short sleeves cuffed once—but the image, too, filled him with heat and hunger.

She was gorgeous.

“Three men are traveling,” she said without a greeting. “An accountant, a doctor and a lawyer. A storm breaks, they have nowhere to stay, so they stop at a farm, knock on the door and ask the farmer if they can spend the night. ‘I only have room for two of you inside,’ the farmer says. ‘The third one will have to sleep in the barn with my pig.’ The accountant says, ‘I’ll do it,’ so he goes to the barn. A little while later, he comes back to the house and says, ‘Sorry, I just can’t stand the smell out there any longer.’ The doctor says, ‘I’ll go,’ and he goes to the barn. Soon after, he’s back at the house, saying, ‘Sorry, the smell is so bad.’ The lawyer sighs and says, ‘I’ll go.’ A little while later, the pig comes to the house and says, ‘Sorry, the stench is just too bad.’”

Robbie didn’t crack a smile. Lawyer jokes weren’t overly appreciated in the Calloway family, where about half the adults had law degrees. “River’s Edge is closed to the public on Wednesdays.”

“I know. Miss Lydia says hello.”

“Did she ask you to come here or did you set this up?”

Anamaria gazed at him a moment, all dark eyes and full lips, revealing nothing. “And this is your business how? Oh, right, her husband’s paying you to spy on both her and me.”

He didn’t feel guilty. A lawyer’s job was to protect his client. If Anamaria were as innocent as she wanted him to believe, she wouldn’t mind that.

“Where’s your toy car?”

He gestured over his right shoulder. “In my sister-in-law’s parking space.” Jamie’s office came with one space in the private lot behind the building, but deeming the alley spooky, she never used it. Since he knew the only two tenants who did, he figured the Vette was safe there.

“My car may not be as pricey—or apparently as high maintenance—as yours, but it is mine, so please get off it.”

He stood, brushing dust from his butt, then stepped onto the curb beside her just as she stepped off. She didn’t go to the driver’s door, though, and let herself in. Instead, she headed across the street.

“Where are you going?”

She waved one hand in the air but didn’t slow or turn back. “Follow me and see.”

It was a nice, sunny Wednesday morning. He had nothing on his schedule for the rest of the day and had a cooler packed with ice-cold water and sandwiches and his boat waiting at the Calloway dock for an afternoon’s fishing—his favorite pastime.

Then he glanced at Anamaria again, at the gentle sway of her hips, the strong muscles of her calves, the swing of her arms—and amended that thought to second favorite. The fish were always biting.

He jogged across the street and caught up with her as she started along the block on the north side of the square. “How is Lydia this morning?” he asked as he matched his stride to hers.

“She’s perturbed with one of your brother’s subs for messing with her flowers.”

He grimaced. He’d once crashed his bike into one of Lydia’s flower beds and had spent the better part of the next month doing penance in her garden, digging, hauling rock, weeding. He’d never gone near anyone’s flower beds after that. “I suppose you had another ‘message’ for her today.”

She glanced at him as they reached the corner, then turned onto the path that led to Ellie’s Deli. Steps led to a broad covered porch, and a screen door opened into the main dining room. Ignoring his comment, she said, “I met your brother.”

“Which one?”

“Russ. He seemed very nice. I was surprised.”

The waitress greeted them with a smile. “Table for two?”

Anamaria gave him another glance, quick but seeing more, he’d bet, than others saw in twice the time. “Are you going to skulk nearby if I don’t invite you to share my table?”

“Calloways don’t skulk.” Then he added, “Yes, I am. We’ll take a table in the back room, Carmen.”

Anamaria opened her mouth as if to object, glanced around the dining room, then closed it again. Ellie’s was a busy place, the main room nearly full, and more than a few people were watching them. Wondering who she was. Wondering what he was doing with her.

Carmen led them to a wrought-iron table on the glassed-in back porch, set out menus and silverware, then left to get iced teas for them both. Anamaria chose the chair facing out. He sat where he had a great view of brick wall and her.

“How many brothers do you have?” she asked as she spread a white linen napkin over her lap.

For a moment, he closed his eyes, aware of her slow, even breaths and that sweet, exotic fragrance, of warmth and desire and need. When he opened them again, she was giving him a level look. “I was projecting the answer. You didn’t get it? Some mind reader you are.”

“I don’t read minds. I read futures.”

Reaching across the table, he held out his hand, palm up. “Read mine.”

“No.”

“Why not? Am I not gullible enough?”

“Because you’re a skeptic. I don’t waste my time on skeptics.”

“How convenient, to deal only with people who already believe your mumbo jumbo.”

She studied him a moment, a cynical smile curving her lips, then opened the menu and turned her attention to it. One instant she was focused entirely on him; the next, she wasn’t. The difference was as obvious as turning off a light.

Carmen returned with the teas, delivered a loaf of warm dark bread and soft butter, then left with their orders. Anamaria continued to ignore him. He didn’t like it.

“Three,” he said at last. “Rick lives in Atlanta, Mitch in Mississippi and Russ here. We look alike, we talk alike, we sometimes act alike, but I’m the charming one.”

Finally she shifted her attention back to him. “I doubt everyone who knows you would agree.”

“Maybe their wives would argue the fact.” Rick’s wife, Amanda, certainly would. Jamie might adore him, and Mitch’s wife, Jessica, hardly knew him, but Amanda tolerated him only for Rick’s sake. Robbie couldn’t even blame her. He’d given her plenty of reason to despise him.

“Why aren’t you married?” she asked.

“How do you know I’m not?”

She nodded toward his left hand and the bare ring finger. He held out his hand, fingers spread, gazing at it. “Rumor has it that my old man had so much practice at removing his wedding band that he could do it with just his thumb, and so quickly that a prospective one-night stand never even noticed his hand moving.”

“I bet he was your hero.”

“I hardly remember the bastard. I was five when he dropped dead of a heart attack. I never missed him.” He sounded callous but didn’t care. “Tell me about your father.”

She gave another of those cynical smiles. “Don’t disappoint me and tell me you didn’t check out my birth records.”

He shrugged. “Mother—Glory Ann Duquesne. Father—Unknown. That’s officially. Unofficially, did you ever meet him?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Did you ever miss him?”

She waited until Carmen had served their meals to answer. “The last marriage in the Duquesne family took place more than two hundred years ago, and the only children born since then have been girls with gifts. Men have little place among us. We have no husbands, brothers, uncles or sons, no fathers or grandfathers. We don’t miss what we don’t have.”

“So your only use for men is to bed them and forget them.” Somewhat similar to his own policy for women. He didn’t indulge in one-night stands; that would be too much like his father. He preferred pleasant, short-term relationships that ended amicably on both sides. In a town like Copper Lake, with its twenty thousand or so citizens, the “amicable” part was important.

“Not forget,” Anamaria disagreed. “The Duquesne women love well.”

But temporarily. It sounded as if the two of them were a good fit, on that issue, at least. But the Duquesne women, apparently, made little to no effort to avoid pregnancy. Robbie made every effort. Adults might not owe each other anything after an affair ended, but a baby…that changed everything.

“Are you planning to move back to Copper Lake?”

She shook her head.

“Sell the house?”

Another shake.

“Come back in another twenty-three years for a visit?”

She speared a tiny tomato and a chunk of cucumber on her fork and dipped them in dressing before shaking her head. Her earrings, silver chains that cascaded from a diamond-shaped shield, caught the sun, winking as they swung gently against her neck. “Who knows? I can’t tell you what I’ll be doing twenty-three days from now, much less twenty-three years.”

“Not a wise thing to say for a woman who claims to read the future.”

“Not my own future. I rarely see anything about myself or people I’m close to.”

“What else do you do? Do you know who’s on the phone before you look at the caller ID display? Can you pick lottery numbers?” He made his voice Halloween-spooky. “Do you see dead people?”

A stricken look crossed her face, shadowing her eyes, chasing away the easy set of her mouth and making her lower lip tremble just a bit until she caught it between her teeth.

Robbie felt like an ass. He’d forgotten that her mother had died, that seeing her dead in her casket was likely the most traumatic event in Anamaria’s life.

“I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean…”

After a moment, she smiled, a quiet, resigned sort of gesture. “It’s all right. I should have expected…”

What? Tactless questions from him?

“I read emotions. I do numbers and charts. I read palms. I have visions. But people are always fascinated by communication with the dead, even nonbelievers. Everyone’s hoping that Grandma will pass on the location of a fortune no one knew existed or that Grandpa will tell them where the casket of priceless jewels is hidden.”

“Do they ever?”

She shrugged, unaware that the tiny action made his fingers itch to touch her. To stroke over her skin. To smooth the cotton of her shirt. To brush her neck the way the earrings did.

Or maybe she wasn’t so unaware, he thought as something came into her eyes. Heat. Intimacy. Mystery. Though a person didn’t need to be psychic to see he found her damned attractive.

“If any of Mama Odette’s clients ever struck it rich as a result of her communing with the spirits, I’m not aware of it.”

“For a seer, you seem to be unaware of a lot of things.”

If his comment annoyed her, she didn’t let it show. She was cool, serene. He liked cool and serene.

They ate in silence for a few moments, until voices became audible in the hallway that led to the room. One of them was a waitress; the other belonged to Ellie Chase. She and Tommy had had an on-again, off-again thing that started about five minutes after she’d moved to Copper Lake. They seemed pretty good together, except that Tommy wanted to get married and have kids, and Ellie didn’t. Occasionally, Robbie wondered why. Even he wanted kids someday.

Fair-skinned, blue-eyed kids with blond hair, he thought with a glance at Anamaria. He’d always been partial to blondes—icy, well-bred, blue-blood, who could fit into his life as if they’d been born to it.

Conversation finished, Ellie rounded the corner. “Hey, Calloway, who let you in here?”

He shifted in the chair to face her. “Don’t bitch, Ellie. I’m one of your best customers.”

“I’ve noticed. All that expensive schooling, and you can’t even put a sandwich together.”

“Yeah, but I work miracles in the courtroom.”

She crossed the small room, her hand extended. “Hi, I’m Ellie Chase.”

“Anamaria Duquesne.” Anamaria took her hand, a quick shake, a light touch, but more than she’d offered Robbie so far. “This is your restaurant?”

“Every table, every brick and every mortgage payment.”

“The food is great.”

“Anamaria’s in the restaurant business in Savannah,” Robbie said, pulling a chair from the next table so Ellie could join them.

“Really? Are you in the market to expand? I’m giving serious thought to selling this place and running away.”

“She threatens to do that about once a month,” Robbie said.

Anamaria smiled as if she knew the feeling. “So does Auntie Lueena. I work for her, so the headaches are hers. I just show up ready to do what she tells me.”

“I love my job. Really, I do.” Ellie sounded as if she were trying to convince herself, but Robbie knew it was so much bull. She’d worked damn hard to make the deli a success and had only recently begun the expansion into a full-service restaurant. She did love her job. “What kind of place does Auntie Lueena have?”

Anamaria smiled again, soft, affectionate. He wondered if that smile was ever spurred by anyone other than family. Friends—he was sure she had them. Boyfriends—he was sure she had them, too. Plenty of them. All that she could handle. “It’s a small family diner. Soul food. Comfort food. She’s been in the same location for thirty years and has had the same menu for twenty-five.”

“And you do a little bit of everything?”

“Wait tables, run the register, wash dishes, cook, bake.”

Robbie had trouble envisioning her in a hot, busy kitchen, hands in steaming water, prepping vegetables, stirring pots, skin dusted with fine white flour. She was too exotic, too sensual for such mundane activities. She should spend her time lounging on a beach somewhere, wearing beautiful clothes, shopping in expensive stores for diamonds and rubies and emeralds to show off against her luscious skin.

Ellie didn’t seem to notice either her exoticness or her sensuality. He supposed, her being a woman, too, that was a good thing. “You ever want a place of your own?”

“No. Not at all.” But Anamaria didn’t say what she did want. A full-time career telling fortunes? Or did “seeing” people’s futures full time require more ingenuity than she possessed? He imagined that on a regular basis it would drain the creative well pretty dry.

“Do you come from a restaurant background?” Anamaria asked.

“No, I—” Distracted, Ellie looked in the direction of the hall, where, an instant later, Tommy appeared around the corner. Right now, judging by the look he wore, if they weren’t off-again, they would be soon.

“You ought to put the boy out of his misery and marry him,” Robbie murmured.

“Worry about your own love life,” she retorted, rising easily from the chair. “Anamaria, it was nice meeting you. Come back soon. I’d love to talk more.”

She met Tommy in the narrow aisle halfway across the room. She stopped; he stepped aside. Their gazes held for a moment, their expressions equally blank, then she moved on.

Definitely off-again. Great. Robbie preferred his buddies to be happily attached or happily unattached. Anything in between was too big a pain in the butt.

Tommy watched until Ellie turned the corner out of sight, took a deep breath, then covered the last few yards to the table. “I called the dock and they said your boat was still in its slip, so I figured you’d be here.” He tossed a manila envelope on the table. “The papers we talked about.”

The case file on Glory Duquesne’s death, complete with photographs. Aiming for relaxed, Robbie slid the envelope off the table and onto his lap. “Thanks.” He gestured toward the chair Ellie had just vacated, but Tommy shook his head. “Anamaria Duquesne, Detective Tommy Maricci.”

One corner of her mouth quirked at his emphasis on Tommy’s title. “Detective Maricci,” she said with a regal nod.

He cocked his head to one side, studying her a moment before saying, “You look familiar. Have I arrested you before?”

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