Wish Upon a Christmas Star (23 page)

“Because I told Logan they were,” Maria said. “I was angry that
he wouldn’t take a chance on us, just like he wouldn’t the first time we broke
up.”

“Oh, really? Logan wouldn’t take a chance?” Annalise put
emphasis on his name.

Understanding dawned on Maria like a Key West sunrise. “I
wouldn’t take a chance, either. I could have offered to move to New York to be
with him.”

“You could have,” Annalise agreed.

“Oh, my gosh. How could I have let him go a second time?” Maria
brought both hands to her cheeks.

Her mind raced. If she got a flight out tonight, she could
spend Christmas with Logan. That is, if he forgave her for being bullheaded. She
would max out her credit card paying for another last-minute flight, but that
didn’t matter. All that mattered was Logan. “I’ve gotta go.”

She dashed away from her sister and past her brother-in-law and
nephews. Then she grabbed the handrail and pounded up the steps.

“Who’s running on the stairs?” her father shouted. “It sounds
like an earthquake.”

Maria kept moving. Her parents’ computer was upstairs in their
office. A doorbell rang. She headed for the staircase to the second floor and
started climbing, vaguely aware that somebody, probably Jack, had answered the
door.

It was strange to get a visitor on Christmas Eve. At another
time, Maria would be curious as to who it was. Not tonight. Her entire focus was
on getting to a computer to check airline flights.

She’d reached the halfway point when she heard the visitor
greet Jack. She froze.

It was Logan.

* * *

M
ARIA
KEPT
PERFECTLY
still in the stairwell, straining to hear
what Logan might say next. Why was he here in Lexington instead of in New York
City? Dare she hope he’d come for her?

The rush of blood in her ears was so loud, Maria was afraid she
might miss his next words.

“Forget this,” she muttered, dashing down the steps and
hurrying to the entryway.

Logan was in the process of following Jack and Tara into the
living room.

“Logan!” she called.

He turned, his eyes crinkling in a smile. A burgundy sweater
that made his brown hair appear burnished peeked out from the collar of his
black jacket. He did look tall, dark and dishy.

Above his head, in the archway between the foyer and the living
room, dangled a sprig of mistletoe. Perfect!

Maria closed the distance between them, threw her arms around
his neck and kissed him.

The feeling that swept through her was electric, as though
somebody had switched on an entire bank of Christmas lights. She’d kissed Logan
mere days ago, yet it felt as though it had been years, maybe because she’d
feared she would never be this close to him again. His arms came around her and
his mouth captured hers until she felt as dizzy as when Jack had spun her
around.

Finally, Logan lifted his head and smiled into her eyes. “What
was that for?”

“I was taking a chance,” she said.

“Oh, no.” Logan shook his head. He smelled great. “You’re
always taking chances. It’s my turn.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“You’ll see.” He stepped back and turned her toward the front
door. “But first we’re gonna have to go outside.”

Logan stopped at the closet to pull out her coat and chose the
right one on the first try. While helping her into her black pea coat, he said,
“We’ll be back in a bit.”

It took Maria a moment to realize he was talking to Jack and
Tara, who’d witnessed their embrace. Maria had completely forgotten about
them.

“And here I thought there was nothing going on between you and
Logan,” Jack quipped.

Maria was so focused on what Logan might say she didn’t even
have the presence of mind to reply to her brother.

The temperature outside was probably in the low forties, but it
felt frosty after the tropical weather in Key West. The moon shone down on the
neighborhood, adding more light to the houses decorated for Christmas. Stars
sparkled in the night sky.

Logan kept hold of her hand, walking with her halfway down the
sidewalk before stopping.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” she asked
breathlessly. Her pulse was skittering, she wasn’t sure whether from being near
him or from anticipation over what he might say or do.

“I’m going to do something I should have done in Key West.” He
gave a little laugh. “No, way before that. I should have done this years and
years ago.”

He reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out a black
velvet box and snapped it open. Inside was a pear-shaped diamond nestled between
two light green gemstones in a white-gold setting.

Maria gasped and covered her mouth with her hands, her heart
beating triple time.

“I’ve loved you for a very long time, Maria DiMarco,” he said,
looking deeply into her eyes. “Will you marry me?”

Her eyes filled with tears and her throat clogged with emotion.
His proposal was so unexpected she literally couldn’t speak. Long moments passed
with neither of them saying a word.

“This wouldn’t be a long-distance marriage,” Logan said
hurriedly, his forehead wrinkling in consternation. “I already gave notice at my
job. I’m moving back to Kentucky. I’m even going to start painting again. I can
be the man you’ve always wanted me to be. I—”

Maria placed three fingers against his lips, stopping the spate
of words.

“Yes!” She forced the reply from her throat, the word coming
out louder than she’d intended. She punctuated her acceptance with a nod. “Yes!
I’ll marry you.”

The lines on his forehead smoothed. He grinned and swept her up
in a kiss every bit as fervent as the one they’d shared inside the house. When
they came up for air, he took the ring from the black velvet box and slid it
onto her finger. His hands weren’t entirely steady, which Maria found
endearing.

“I wanted to get you something with a Key West feel, since
that’s where we fell in love again,” he said. “Those green stones are the color
of key lime. They’re called peridot.”

“I love the ring.” She held out her hand to gaze at the diamond
set off by the lime-colored gemstones. Blinking back happy tears, she lifted her
gaze to his face. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but can you get your job
back?”

“Why would I want my job back?”

“Because I can move to New York City,” she answered. Oh, man.
She really would move away from her beloved Kentucky. For Logan.

“I love you for making the offer,” Logan said, “but it’s better
if I move home. I’ll even have a job. A friend of mine has been trying to get me
to work at his financial firm for years.”

“Were you considering it before now?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t think it stacked up to my job in
New York. But you know what? Until these last few weeks, I had my priorities all
wrong. I should have taken a page from my parents’ book. Life away from work is
what’s important. And you’re the most important thing in my life.”

Maria lifted a hand and traced his cheek. “I won’t let you
forget that.”

His hold on her tightened. “Believe me, I won’t. In fact, if
you still want to go to Vegas and get married, I’m game.”

She needed to think about that only for an instant. “I’ve
changed my mind. I’d like to wait, so our friends and family can see us get
married.”

“You mean, like they’ve seen us get engaged?” He nodded toward
her parents’ house.

Crowded around the two windows in the living room was Maria’s
entire family. She even picked out her two teenage nephews. Annalise and Jack
were giving her a thumbs-up, her mother’s smile was ear to ear and her father
seemed to be whistling.

Suddenly embarrassed, Maria buried her face against Logan’s
shoulder. He laughed.

“It’s okay with me if we wait to get married,” Logan said.
“Your wish is my command. That’s why I wanted to propose out here. I thought we
might see another shooting star.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in things like miracles and
wishes coming true,” she said.

“With you in my arms, I could be persuaded into changing my way
of thinking,” he said. “But I’m sorry the wish you made on those shooting stars
didn’t come true.”

“Oh, but it did.”

“What?” His brows lifted toward his hairline. “Didn’t you wish
that you’d find Mike?”

“Not exactly,” Maria said. “I wished for a second chance. And
that’s what I got. With you.”

“A second chance. I like the sound of that.” He lowered his
head to hers, with her family still watching, and the stars and the Christmas
lights sparkling all around them, as bright as their future promised to be.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt of
The Road to
Bayou Bridge
by Liz Talley!

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CHAPTER ONE

August
2012
Naval Station, Rota,
Spain

T
HE
PAPER
ACTUALLY
SHOOK
in Darby Dufrene’s hand—that’s
how shocked he was by the document he’d discovered in a box of old papers. He’d
been looking for the grief book he’d made as a small child and instead had found
something that made his gut lurch against his ribs.

“Dude, come on. The driver needs to go.” Hal Severson’s voice
echoed in the half-full moving truck parked below the flat Darby had shared with
the rotund navy chaplain for the past several years. His roommate had waited
semi-good-naturedly while Darby climbed inside to grab the book before it was
shipped to Seattle, but good humor had limits.

“Just a sec,” Darby called, his eyes refusing to leave the
elaborate font of the certificate he’d pulled from a clasped envelope trapped in
the back of his Bayou Bridge Reveille yearbook. How in the hell had this escaped
his attention? Albeit it had been buried in with some old school papers he’d
tossed aside over ten years ago and vowed never to look at again, surely the
state of Louisiana seal would have permeated his brain and screamed,
Open me!

Yet, back then he’d been in a funk—a childish, rebellious huff
of craptastic proportions. He probably hadn’t thought about much else except the
pity party he’d been throwing himself.

The moving truck’s engine fired and a loud roar rumbled through
the trailer, vibrating the wood floor. The driver was eager to pick up the rest
of his load, presumably a navy family heading back to the States, and his
patience with Darby climbing up and digging through boxes already packed was
also at an end. Darby slid the certificate back into its manila envelope, tucked
it into his jacket and emerged from the back end of the truck.

Hal’s red hair glinted in the sunlight spilling over the tiled
roof, and his expression had evoled to exasperation. The man was hungry. Had
been hungry for hours while the movers slowly packed up Darby’s personal effects
and scant pieces of furniture, and no one stood between Hal and his last chance
to dine in El Puerto de Santa Maria, the city near the Rota Naval Base, with his
best comrade. “Let’s go already. Saucy Terese and her crustacean friends await
us.”

“Not Il Caffe di Roma, Hal. I don’t want to look into that
woman’s eyes and wonder if she might greet me with a filet knife.”

“You ain’t that good, brother,” Hal said in a slow Oklahoma
drawl. “She’ll find someone else on which to ply her wiles when the new guy
arrives.”

“You mean the new guy whose name is Angela Dillard?”

“The new JAG officer’s a girl?”

Darby smiled. “Actually she’s a woman.”

Hal jingled his keys.
“Entendido.”

“Your Spanish sucks.”

“Whatever. Now get your butt in gear. There are some crabs and
sherry with my name on them.”

Darby tried to ignore the heat of the document pressing against
his chest. Of course, it wasn’t actually hot. Just burning a hole in his stomach
with horrible dread. He was an attorney and the document he carried wasn’t a
prank, but he couldn’t figure out how the license had been filed. His father had
virtually screamed the implausibility at him nearly eleven years ago—the day
he’d shipped Darby off to Virginia—so this didn’t make sense. “Fine, but if
Terese comes toward me with a blade, you must sacrifice yourself. If not, Picou
will ply the sacrificial purifications of the Chickamauga on you. She’s been
waiting for five years to get me back home to Beau Soleil.”

Hal rubbed his belly. “Did they perform human sacrifices?”

“Who? The Native Americans or Picou?”

“Either.”

Darby grinned. “I don’t know about the Chickamauga, but my mom
will go psycho if I don’t climb off that plane.”

“Consider it done. No way I’m left to deal with your mother.
She makes mine look like that woman from
Leave It to
Beaver
.”

“Your mom
is
June Cleaver all the
way down to the apron and heels.” Darby knew firsthand. Her weekly chocolate
chips cookies had caused him to pack on a few pounds.

“I know. All women pale in comparison.” Hal opened the door of
his white convertible BMW, his one prideful sin, and slid in. He perched a pair
of Ray-Bans on his nose and fired the engine.

“Except our housekeeper, Lucille. Can’t wait to get my hands on
her pecan pie.” Darby took one last look at his beachfront flat before sliding
onto the hot leather seats of Hal’s car. He’d already shipped his motorcycle to
the States weeks ago. He wanted it available when he got to Seattle and went in
search of apartments, though he knew he’d likely have to sell it in favor of a
respectable sedan. With all that Northwest rain, he’d have little chance to take
as many mind-clearing drives as he had along the coast of Spain. Plus, Shelby
hated it.

“Well, say goodbye, dude,” Hal said, sweeping one arm over the
sunbaked villa where Darby had spent the past two years, before pulling away and
heading toward the motorway that would take them into the city.

“Goodbye, dude,” Darby said, parroting his friend. He smiled as
the wind hit his cheeks, but as soon as he remembered the document, his smile
slipped away. Trouble brewed and this homecoming would be no cakewalk despite
the pecan pie that waited.

“Are you sad? Thought you’d been ready to leave Rota since you
got here, Louisiana boy.”

How could Darby tell him his mood wasn’t about leaving the base
and his small adventure in Spain but about the marriage license he’d found in
his high school trunk? He could, but there was no sense in ruining his last
night with the man who’d become like a brother to him over the course of his
deployment. With Hal being the base chaplain, most would think him an odd choice
of roommate for a formerly degenerate bayou boy, but something about Hal clicked
as soon as Darby met the man who’d been looking for a flatmate. Having Hal as a
friend, guide and trusted mentor had made the move overseas tolerable. In fact,
after a few months, Darby had downright enjoyed himself.

And he’d found Shelby through Hal.

And when he met the blonde teacher who taught at the American
school on base, he knew he’d finally grown up, finally left his confusion and
his past behind. Here was what he’d been looking for—a beautiful woman, a
promising career, if the interview went well, and a clean slate in a new
place—so he’d flung the dice and shipped his things to Seattle rather than home
to Bayou Bridge.

He patted the inside pocket of his jacket.

But maybe he wouldn’t be moving forward as soon as he’d
planned.

Because he was fairly certain he was legally married to Renny
Latioles.

* * *

R
ENNY
L
ATIOLES
ADJUSTED
her reading glasses and
stared at the computer screen. How did L9-10 get so far away from the Black Lake
Reservoir? And even more disturbing, why was the damn crane on Beau Soleil
property?

“She still there?” fellow biologist Carrie Dupuy asked,
mindlessly sipping the bitter coffee that had been sitting in the urn all day
long. Coffee stayed brewing at the Black Lake station where they worked side by
side on the reintroduction of the whooping crane into South Louisiana.

“Yeah, and I don’t get it. It’s over sixty miles from the
habitat you’d think she would prefer. No other crane has gone that far to the
north. There isn’t a lot of marsh in that parish even with the wetlands
receding.”

“It’s been well over a week, Ren. Maybe you better head up and
get a visual. Make sure she’s not tangled up in something.”

“But the bird is moving around in a fairly large perimeter. If
you look at this satellite map, you can see the field it’s inhabiting.” Renny
dragged a finger across the screen. “Look. Woodlands, bayou and one abandoned
rice field.”

Carrie frowned at the computer. “I agree. It doesn’t make
sense, but obviously L9-10 has found a little slice of heaven in St. Martin
Parish. Maybe this is a good thing, this adapting and surviving in an atypical
area, but we need to check this out in person, and since you live up that
way...”

Renny pushed back from the screen, rolling toward the filing
cabinet sitting a few yards away. She grabbed a fresh logbook.

“Why not just take your computer?”

Pushing tendrils of hair out of her eyes, Renny shook her head.
“Nope. Going old-school. Especially since Stevo lost the tablet in the basin.
I’ll take handwritten notes and then add them to our files when I return. If
L9-10 decides to stay in her new digs, I’ll have to spend a bit more time close
to Bayou Bridge.”

“Easy for you because you live there.”

Renny shook her head. “It actually worries me since you’re
heading to Virginia in a few weeks.”

“I’ll call Stevo in Baton Rouge and see if he can send Ruby
back to work on field notes and mind the fledglings. The captive cranes seemed
to like her. She even got L-3 to take walks with her.”

Renny nodded. “She’s a good grad assistant. Glad we got her
instead of that smarmy ex-fraternity president.”

As the project manager carrying out the reintroduction of the
whooping crane into the wintering grounds of Southwest Louisiana, Renny had
tremendous pressure to succeed on her shoulders. The federal and state grants
only stretched so far, and after losing one of the released cranes to natural
predators earlier that summer, she felt even more driven to prove all was going
as planned. Private donors liked to see results—successful results—or they
didn’t open their wallets. And at the rate their funds were dwindling, they
needed to tread carefully.

Renny felt something sink in her stomach. Ironically, L9-10 was
on Beau Soleil property, which, come to think of it, wasn’t so odd considering
the Dufrenes owned lots of land in St. Martin Parish. No problem except there
were far too many painful memories attached to anything named Dufrene—even an
abandoned rice field.

Darby.

His image flashed in her mind. Long legged, brown from the sun,
alligator smile. He’d been pure pleasure in a pair of worn jeans. God, she’d
loved him so much. Loved the way he touched her, loved the way he made her feel.
Wild, alive, made for him.

Of course that had all been a lie.

A young girl’s dream of what love should be. And she wasn’t a
young girl anymore.

The real Darby hadn’t looked back. He’d left Louisiana and the
girl he supposedly loved behind. Left her behind broken both physically and
spiritually. But his dismissal had made her stronger. Had made her who she now
was, and she was damn proud of what she’d become.

She shook herself.

“Rat run over your grave?” Carrie asked.

“Yeah, something like that.” Renny pulled off her reading
glasses and tried not to think about the rat. Darby was behind her and she’d
made peace with herself and what had happened...or rather what had not happened.
They’d been eighteen, high school seniors and majorly naive. She’d long ago
forgiven both herself and the wild Dufrene boy who’d talked her into loving
him.

Besides, she was too old to worry about those feelings again,
even if she would soon have to deal with his mother. And Picou was never easy to
deal with. On the surface, Picou Dufrene seemed docile and enlightened in her
yoga gear and caftans, but underneath the feathers and fluff was a woman of pure
steel. A woman who always got her way.

Just like her youngest son.

“You heading out now?” Carrie wrinkled her nose at her coffee
cup. “How long has this been sitting in the pot?”

“Long enough to grow hair on your chest,” Renny said, sliding
the journal into the beat-up leather tote she’d bought the day she got her
master’s in biology. “And, yeah, I’m going to head up and see what’s going on
with L9-10. She was always such a skittish bird. Should have known she’d settle
down in some weird location. Damn storm.”

Carrie set her mug down. “But a good opportunity for us to see
how far they’ll stretch the habitat. Go. Call me later and let me know what you
find, and then go have yourself a good weekend. As in, go do something fun for a
change.”

“I have fun.” Why was everyone pushing her to go out and lasso
a man? Even her mother, who’d formerly harped on the evilness of the opposite
sex, had started “suggesting” Renny go somewhere other than church for her
social life. Renny was Bev’s only shot at grandchildren. Forget biological
clocks. Grandmother’s clocks were wound tighter.

“If you call sitting in a pirogue watching herons mate fun,
then I guess you do. Come on, it’s Friday, Renny. Don’t let your leg keep you
from shaking it.”

“Shaking it?”

“Your booty, girlfriend.”

Renny pushed through the door leading to the lobby of the
office. “Sure. I’ll think about it.”

But she wouldn’t. Carrie had poked a soft spot in her
psyche—one she tried to ignore. Renny didn’t want to squirrel herself away like
some disfigured misanthrope. No, she wanted to be that game gal who didn’t mind
the stares, whose zest for living and glowing smile chased away any thoughts of
pity. A small part of her wanted to be the girl she used to be...but it was only
a small part. The rest of her liked her life as it was. Simple. Driven.

Safe.

She dashed that last thought because what was wrong with living
safe anyway? Having control was a good thing, considering she’d spent a good
deal of time having no control over anything—even her body. Most of her doctors
were convinced she’d never walk again. And here she was walking out of her
office door.

Okay, the pitch in her step still bothered her. Vain, stupid
and weak, sure, but walking into a bar, aka meat market, wasn’t fun when a girl
unintentionally lurched herself at men. So she didn’t go to bars. Or singles
mixers. Or on blind dates.