Just Fooling Around: Darcy's Dark Day/Reg's Rescue\Cam's Catastrophe/Devon's Dilemma (14 page)

R
EG WORKED HARD NOT TO LET
his excitement show on his face, but he was pretty sure he failed. After all, he could see clearly enough his own feelings reflected in Anne’s eyes.

A witch.

It was just as Olivia’s journal had referenced, and the timing was right. The eighteenth century. Back when Timothy Franklin was getting into trouble with women of questionable character.

It wasn’t a stretch to assume that Timothy had bedded Mirabelle, seen the amulet and taken it.

Mirabelle realized who took it, and let it be known that she would take her revenge—and she would take it through witchcraft if necessary.

Considering the curse he now lived under, he had a feeling Mirabelle’s assumed threat wasn’t idle.

What didn’t make sense, though, was why the curse still existed if Mirabelle got her amulet back. Either they were chasing the wrong story, or Mirabelle held a grudge.

He was banking that it was the latter.

“Do you know anything else?” Anne asked the girl.

“What? About Mirabelle, you mean?”

“Anything at all might help.”

“Well, gosh. I heard that she collected statues of angels.”

Reg caught Anne’s eye, remembering the reference to angels in the inscription. “Interesting.”

Libby rolled her eyes. “Weird, actually. ’Cause while she’s off collecting angels, she’s also supposedly cursing people. Made them have bad luck.” She wiggled her fingers. “Whoo woo, and all that.”

“Whoo woo,” Reg repeated, the irony heavy in his voice.

“It’s stupid,” Libby said, “but what the hell do I know? Maybe it would be cool.”

“Cool?” Reg knew he shouldn’t ask—that he should keep her on point—but he was too curious about what she meant.

“Sure. I mean, hell, there was no curse on my family, but they still got wiped out. First the damn hurricane, then my dad’s stroke. And it was just bad luck. Woulda been nice to have a curse to blame it on. At least then stuff wouldn’t be so random.”

“Random,” he repeated.

“You know. Like what they say. ‘Life happens’ and all that bullshit.”

He looked at Anne, his chest suddenly tight. “Right. All that bullshit.” A moment passed, and as it did, it seemed to Reg that something within him was shifting, even though he couldn’t quite grasp what it was. Now, however, wasn’t the time for introspection. He needed to learn what this woman knew.

“Anything else you can think of?” Anne asked, as if reading his mind.

Libby’s forehead scrunched up. “Well, I know that some of her descendants donated a ton of money to build a church a couple of generations ago.” She rolled her eyes. “I know because I got dragged to mass there, and I’m not even Catholic. I guess they figured a church makes up for having a witch in the family. And I know she lived more than ninety years, and was one of the first people buried in Lafayette Cemetery.” She swiveled on her stool to look at them both. “Does that help you any?”

Fifteen minutes later, Anne and Reg were pondering that very question. “Does it?” Anne asked as they walked through Lafayette Cemetery Number One, just a few blocks up the road from Camillia Grill. What better place, after all, to find an angel?

They were holding hands, and if you ignored the fact that they were walking among the dead, the afternoon felt wonderful. Like he’d asked her for a date, and now they were taking a walk through the park. A normal, typical, pleasant afternoon. It was, he thought, just a little bit like heaven.

“If Franklin didn’t actually return the amulet,” Anne began.

“And if it was Mirabelle who took it back herself,” he continued, picking up her thread.

“Then that probably wouldn’t be a reason for her to remove the curse,” she finished. “So that means a Franklin needs to return her amulet.”

“That’s the plan,” he said.

“And when you do—when
we
—do, then the curse will be lifted.” She smiled brightly. “Of course, maybe it’s a moot point. Nothing bad’s happened since you lost your hotel reservation.”

“The other shoe’s waiting to drop,” he said, but he smiled as he spoke.

She shook her head in mock exasperation. Or real frustration, he amended, as soon as he heard the harsh tone of her voice. “Dammit, Reg. You’ve got to accept that even if you can’t end it, you can live with it.
We
can live with it.”

“We are going to end it,” he said, because he was determined not to fail today. He’d come to end this curse, he was the closest he had ever been, and he was not about to back off now.

“Good,” she said. “Great. I hope we do. But
if
we don’t, take a look around. We’ve gone most of the day with very little bad luck. Your siblings are happy with their spouses, and they’re entirely intact. Your plane didn’t fall out of the sky. My house didn’t collapse around our ears. The curse is weakening. With each generation, it’s less of a threat. Dammit, Reg, don’t you see? It’s whittling away to nothing, and in the meantime, I love you.”

Her words cut through him, sharp and terrifying even while they buoyed him up. All his fears, all his walking away, and still she loved him.

“This is it,” Anne said, looking at a raised stone grave. “See?” She nodded to the plaque with Mirabelle’s name engraved. She hadn’t been put into a family tomb, as most of the people in the cemetery, and they couldn’t find anyplace to leave the amulet.

“Maybe we open the grave?”

She frowned. “Ick, but maybe.” She looked up at him and he couldn’t help but smile at her. Yeah, maybe they needed to open the sarcophagus, but he had something to say first. “Anne,” he said. “I love you, too.”

He watched her smile bloom wide, and felt his heart lift.

“Then forget the damn curse,” she said. She grabbed him by the belt loops and pulled him against the stone tombs next to Mirabelle’s grave. He buried his fingers in her hair and pulled her mouth to his, wanting to tell her that nothing in the world would make him forget it. The question was, could he live with it.

He didn’t get the chance to speak, though, because suddenly they were tumbling backwards, falling into the crumbling remains of the tomb against which they’d been leaning. “Shit!” He leaped to his feet, then started pulling rubble off of Anne. “Dammit, don’t you dare be hurt. Anne! Anne!”

“I’m okay.” Her voice was soft, but strong, and limb by limb, she wiggled her body. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

He sat back on his heels, his heart pounding, and Libby’s words running through his head.
Life happens.

Yeah, he thought, it did.

And so did curses. Hell, he knew that better than anyone.

The question was, if he was going to be cursed, did he want to be doomed with or without the woman he loved?

The answer was the same as it always had been: he wanted to be with Anne.

But today…

Well, today, maybe he’d finally realized that Anne understood what being with him meant, and it was her decision, too.

He took a deep breath, savoring the moment, then held out his hand. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

“Home?” She blinked. “What about the curse? The sarcophagus?”

He glanced sideways at it. “I guess we’ll learn to live with it.”

She clutched his hand and climbed to her feet. “What? Reg?”

“You’re right. Hell, Libby was right.”

Her eyes widened, and she hooked her arms around his neck, then pressed a soft kiss to his lips. “Reg Franklin, I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said, meaning it more than he could ever express.

“Do you mean it? About the curse not mattering to you anymore?”

“I mean it.”

She nodded, her expression pensive.

“Anne? What is it?”

“I’m not sure now if I should even say, but I think I’ve figured it out.” She brushed her palm against his cheek. “I know where to take the amulet.”

T
HEY HAD TO CALL
L
IBBY
to be sure, but then they headed straight from the cemetery to St. Theresa’s Church on Poydras. The small church that had received funding from Mirabelle’s family. Funding and statuary.

“The angels,” Anne had said. “The inscription talked about returning it to the soul of the angel, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, if Mirabelle wrote the inscription, how could she be certain of how she’d be buried?”

He’d seen where she was going with that. “But if she
already had a certain angel to which the amulet belonged…”

“Something on which she’d worked her magic,” Anne had finished.

“Sounds whoo woo,” he’d said with a grin.

“Very,” she’d agreed. “But if we’re lucky, that statue would have been donated to St. Theresa’s along with the money.”

And now, as they stood in the courtyard, he had to agree. It was filled with angel statues, some standing serenely, some with swords or trumpets. Some with wings spread. Some even appearing to fly.

“Hopefully, it’s one of these.”

One stood in the center of the courtyard on a pedestal surrounded by roses. “Look,” Reg said, pointing to the statue. He heard Anne’s intake of breath, and knew that she’d seen the same thing he did: an indentation within the stone breast of the statue just big enough to hold the amulet.

He met her eyes, and she nodded. Slowly, reverently, he moved toward the statue, then placed the amulet back into the breast of the angel.

There were no fireworks, no flares, no marching band.

But it was over.

He stepped back and found Anne beside him. Without a word, he pulled her close, sliding his mouth over hers. She opened for him, a soft moan escaping as she curled her arms around him. He slid his hands over her back possessively, wanting her desperately, and knowing he had her. She was his now, truly. Everything about her told him so, the way she pressed against him, the way she kissed him, the way her heart beat hard against his chest.

“Anne,” he murmured. “Dear God, I love you.”

She stroked his cheek, her smile gentle. “Can you tell if it’s over?” she asked. “Did the earth move?”

He laughed, then kissed her again, hard. “It just did, sweetheart. It just did.”

I
T WAS THE FIRST TIME
in too many years that Reg had not dreaded the coming of April 1. He was looking forward to it with anticipation, excitement. Triumph.

Finally, he’d beaten the curse.

The alarm in his watch beeped, signaling midnight. The start of a new era, the start of the rest of their lives. They were so lucky. Really.

From outside the bedroom window of the Dawes ancestral home, the gas lamps of New Orleans glowed warm and familiar. Inside, candles flickered, shadows dancing on the high ceilings and the velvet-covered walls. Reg looked over at his wife with loving eyes, knowing he’d found something better, as well.

Anne.

The bedroom was cluttered with boxes still waiting to be unpacked, but there had been other things, more important things to take care of when they arrived yesterday. Namely, making love to his wife. A man had to have his priorities.

Her lashes fluttered open, and he felt the familiar tightening in his heart. One year they’d been together as a couple, and the reaction never changed. She smiled and reached out a hand to stroke his cheek, and Reg felt
another tightening. Lower, but no less important, and once again, Reg reordered his priorities.

Before he could react as biology dictated he should, his phone vibrated, and he read the text message. Frowned.

“What’s wrong?” Anne asked.

“Nothing,” he reassured her, still sounding confident because this wasn’t a big deal. An annoyance, a mere neurological gnat.

The phone vibrated again. Another incoming message, this one from Darcy.

Impossible. Anne looked at him, worry in her face. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine,” he said with a laugh, a little less confident. A sinking pit low in his stomach replaced the very nice and completely ignorant bliss that had been there earlier.

The phone vibrated again, and as Reg read Devon’s words, the full impact sunk in. They hadn’t broken the curse.

Oops.

“I might have miscalculated,” he began.

“You don’t miscalculate,” she cut in, still defending him. Still completely sure of him.

“This time, I might have,” he stated, to keep the record straight.

“How so?”

“I should have made sure. I should have tested this out. But I didn’t. It’s not over. And now you’re stuck.”

She arched a graceful, yet militant brow. “Stuck?”

Not surprisingly, she didn’t look unhappy, nor comfortable nor, as he’d so cleverly put it, “stuck.” But Anne
had never been the one with doubts. That’d been Reg. “Not stuck. If you want to leave, I’ll understand.”

That was a complete lie, but Reg chose not to muddy the waters with pesky things such as emotion and panic and the complete destruction of all happiness as he’d come to know it.

“What if I don’t want to leave? What if I’m happy right where I am?”

And once again, his lungs began to function as before. “Certainly that’s what you’ve always told me. But things aren’t quite as easy as before. You had expectations of calm. Of goodness.”

“Reg,” she started, in a bossy voice that got him hard all over again.

“What?”

Her hands twined around his neck, into his hair, tangling there as if she meant to keep him. “I loved you before the calm, before the goodness. It doesn’t matter to me. I love you.”

“I know that,” he insisted.

“For better, for worse,” she insisted, right back at him. Stubborn as always, which was one of the main reasons he loved her.

“Jenna’s having her baby in a cab somewhere on the George Washington Bridge,” he said, trying to make her understand what “worse” actually entailed.

“She’s a doctor. I’m sure she’ll know what to do.”

“Devon’s house got destroyed once again.”

“That’s why she works for an insurance company.”

“And Darcy’s stranded on Cape Cod with Evan.”

“And I’m sure she’s happy as a clam because of it.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“I’ve got you. Nothing’s going to bother me.”

And finally, his heart began to ease. Not that he’d doubted her at all.

Reg leaned down, and as his mouth covered hers, a cold breeze blew through the house, overturning the candle and setting the chenille blanket on fire.

Calmly, Anne beat out the flame, one-handed, not even pausing in mid-kiss.

Cursed? Not a chance, Reg scoffed. Not a chance.