Loving Laura (The Cantrelle Family Trilogy) (31 page)

“That’s not all....”

A gust of wind rattled the branches of a large sycamore tree, shaking raindrops over them. Nicole hugged her arms, suddenly conscious of how chilly it was and how long they’d been standing there.

“Elise told my sister her father’s name was Cantrelle.”

Nicole tried not to show how that little piece of information had startled her. “In Louisiana,” she said carefully, “the name Cantrelle is very common. Perhaps we’re third or fourth cousins or something.” She handed the picture back to him. “There’re many branches of the Cantrelle family around.”

“Are you
sure
you’ve never heard of her?” He tucked the picture back into his pocket.

“Yes, I’m positive.” She ignored the uneasiness pulsing through her.

“It’s hard to believe two people could look so strikingly alike and not be closely related,” he persisted.

“Now look, I don’t care if you believe me or not. I’ve told you all I know. And I don’t have time to stand out here in the cold and talk anymore. I’m late as it is.” She pointedly looked at her watch. It was now one o’clock. “I’ve got to get home. Sorry I couldn’t help you.”

“Where do you live?”

Nicole took a deep breath, as irritation with his persistence finally got the better of her. “It’s none of your business. Now goodbye, Mr. Forrester.” She turned and began to walk away.

He matched his stride to hers, coming up and walking next to her on the street side.

“Go away, Mr. Forrester.” What did he
want
from her, anyway?

“How about inviting me in? Maybe we could talk some more. Maybe you’d remember something that might help me.”

She stopped abruptly. “I’m not going to invite you in. I don’t even know you! Besides, I have nothing more to say to you. So if you don’t mind, I’m in a hurry. I’m going away for the weekend, and I should have already been on my way.”

She refused to meet his eyes. She didn’t want to be swayed by eyes that reminded her of the ocean on a dazzling summer’s day. By eyes that made her good sense fly out the window. By eyes that could persuade her a possible serial killer was actually a good guy.

Instead she stalked off. A few minutes later when she looked back, he was still standing where she’d left him, in the middle of the sidewalk with his hands shoved in his pockets. She shrugged aside the tiny spark of regret she felt when she realized he’d finally taken the hint and she wouldn’t be seeing him again.

* * *

Jack watched her go, admiring the way her legs looked in the snug-fitting black boots. What a sexy little spitfire! He liked women who didn’t let anyone push them around. From the minute she’d whirled around and waved that can of Mace at him, he’d known she wasn’t Elise.

Although Jack hadn’t known Elise all that well—he didn’t spend enough time in Houston to really know any of his sister Jenny’s friends—he’d seen enough of Elise to know she was quiet and shy. Nicole Cantrelle might look like Elise Arnold on the outside, but no one spending any time at all with Nicole would mistake her for the other woman. Unlike Elise, there was nothing shy or timid about Nicole. Those dark eyes of hers had flashed at him in angry defiance, and her entire body had seemed to pulsate with energy and life. He couldn’t imagine the reserved Elise standing up to him the way Nicole had.

But still... disregarding their personalities, it was uncanny how much Nicole Cantrelle and Elise Arnold looked like each other. No matter what Nicole said, no matter what she actually believed, Jack was sure there was a connection between the two women. And he was just the man to uncover it.

And the first step was to find out more about Nicole. So when she turned right onto Coliseum, he followed at a slower pace. When he got to the comer, he peered cautiously down the street. He saw one bright flash of yellow as she disappeared into a driveway a few doors down on the right. Jack stood there for a moment, then decided to cross the street. If he could find a place to wait where he wouldn’t be noticed, he could watch to see if she really was going somewhere.

The house on the property she’d entered was a double-galleried home set back from the street in a lush garden setting and surrounded by an ornate iron fence with still-blooming plumbago peeking through the grillwork. Jack admired the well-tended grounds. Someday, if he ever had a home of his own, he wanted a garden and lots of flowers and trees. The house was shaded by two mammoth live oaks that dripped from the morning’s rain and probably kept the big house cool and comfortable in warm weather. He could see another building farther back on the property, and he wondered if Nicole lived in the big house or in the smaller structure.

A half hour later, Jack’s feet were numb. He wished he had his car. At least then he could turn on the heater instead of standing outside freezing his butt off. Maybe this was a dumb idea. Maybe Nicole had lied to him, and she wasn’t going anywhere. He could stand out here until doomsday, and she’d probably be inside laughing at him.

Just as these black thoughts crossed his mind, he saw her. She emerged from the back of the property and opened one side of the big garage. Minutes later, Nicole and a little girl, who looked to be about two or three, had loaded a couple of suitcases into the trunk of a small red Geo and were backing out of the driveway. He wondered if the little girl was Nicole’s. He was certain she hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring.

Jack, with all the finely honed instincts of a veteran reporter, wrote down the numbers on her license plate as Nicole drove away. He took one last look at the house, then, whistling, he walked rapidly toward the streetcar stop.

Whether Nicole Cantrelle knew it or not, she hadn’t seen the last of him.

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Prologue

Lafayette, Louisiana --- early July, 2000

He liked everything about her.

Her hair. The way the dark, glossy curls bounced when she walked.

Her head and the way she held it. Chin up, so that his view of her profile and her sleek neck was unobstructed.

Her graceful movements. The flash of her long, tanned legs as she strode past him.

The length of her skirts. Not too short. Not too long. Just brushing the tops of her knees so that she looked ladylike and innocently sexy all at the same time.

The colors she wore. Cool colors. Soft colors. Feminine colors.

This was the third time he’d seen her. Every afternoon he sat on a bench at Cypress Lake and ate the lunch Daisy had packed for him that morning. And all three times, about ten minutes after he’d arrived, the woman entered the pathway that circled the lake, walked past him as he sat on his bench munching his sandwich, and proceeded a few yards down to a bench that sat directly under one of the cypress trees. Once there, she’d sit and open her big book bag, remove a sketch pad and quietly draw for about forty minutes. Then she’d put her sketch pad away and walk quickly back to the main campus.

Dev knew she was a University of Southwestern Louisiana student, although she looked as if she were in her late twenties or early thirties—much older than usual for a college coed.

She never looked at him. Or at any of the other males who eyed her as she walked along the path. Dev liked that about her. He liked that very much. It reinforced his idea that she was someone special, a woman without vanity or wiles. An honest woman.

Of course, he wasn’t the romantic type, but this woman brought out something in him . . . .

He even gave her a name.

Ann. In his imaginings, he’d called her Ann. He’d always liked the sound of the name Ann. It was clean. Pure. Simple. And old-fashioned. No parents named their daughters Ann anymore. Like Mary, Ann was a forgotten name, belonging to a bygone era when women were happy and eager to make a home for their families. When they thought it was the most important work a woman could do to keep house and cook meals and care for children and wait for their men to come home from the wars.

She had an aura of innocence about her...a sweet, straightforward integrity that drew him... that caused him to think about her at odd moments throughout his day.

He wondered what would happen if one of these days when she approached his bench, he spoke to her. Just said “Hello” or “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”

He imagined her voice: soft, low, cultured. Never strident. Never shouting jingo. Never argumentative.

He imagined her smile. Gentle. Sweet. A little wary. Because she wasn’t the kind of woman who would feel comfortable talking to a strange man—even on a college campus—but she also wasn’t the kind of woman who could be deliberately rude or cruel. Dev wasn’t sure how he knew that about her, but he did.

Yet something held him back from speaking to her. He told himself that he didn’t want to do anything to make her feel uncomfortable or cause her to stop coming to the lake. He also told himself it wasn’t a good idea for a teacher to make an overture to a student—even an older student.

But he knew these were all excuses. Because in his innermost thoughts, deep where his darkest secrets lay, Dev admitted that to speak to her, to force her to respond to him, might destroy all his illusions about her.

Chapter One

“Thank you, Ms. Cantrelle. I hope your stepmama, she likes the scarf.”

Elise smiled at the motherly Cajun salesclerk.

Ms. Cantrelle. She savored the sound of the name. Cantrelle. Her father’s name.

And now it was hers.

Elise accepted her charge card from the clerk at Abdalla’s, her favorite place to shop in Lafayette. She signed the charge slip and took her package, which contained the silk scarf—a gift for her stepmother, Lisette—whose birthday was on Sunday.

The smile remained on Elise’s lips as she exited the store and headed for the parking lot and her Toyota. The July sky was clear and bright, and even though it was only a little after nine-thirty in the morning, the air held the promise of another hot Louisiana day.

Elise was filled with a deep contentment. Her life was so different than it had been only a few years ago. During the past three years she’d made so many positive changes: she’d left an abusive husband and gotten a divorce, she’d been reunited with the father she’d never known and been made his legal heir, and she’d enrolled at the University of Southwestern Louisiana.

She smiled as she unlocked her car and tossed her package in the back seat. Next January, after the fall semester, she would have her degree in psychology. Then, if all went as she hoped, she would join the full-time staff at the women’s shelter.

Elise sighed with satisfaction. Soon she would even be financially independent—a goal she used to wonder if she’d ever reach. At thirty-one, her future seemed bright—the possibilities that lay ahead of her limitless. It was hard to believe that so few years back she had felt almost completely alone and without hope. Now she had not only found her father, but she had friends, she had goals, she felt useful and in control of her destiny, and she had been welcomed into her father’s large and wonderful family without reservation.

As she started her car, she glanced at her watch. Nine-forty. She had plenty of time. She wasn’t due at the St. Jacques Women’s Shelter until ten. For the past year and a half she’d worked three days a week—Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays—at the shelter, doing whatever needed doing. She’d worked behind the reception desk, helped sort and catalog donations in the Thrift Shop, assisted in food preparation in the kitchen, organized field trips, tutored children and taught their mothers simple skills, gone through the training necessary to man the hotline, and now she led group therapy sessions as well.

The work was by turns enormously satisfying or deeply frustrating. Sometimes it was even frightening. The workers at the shelter fought a constant battle to stay as objective as possible. Meg Bodine, St. Jacques’s director, had warned Elise of the danger of becoming too personally involved with any of the women and children. “They’ll break your heart, sweet pea, if you let them,” she was fond of saying. “Teach them, help them, listen to them—but don’t take their troubles home with you. Not if you want to survive.”

Elise smiled as she thought of Meg, who, in addition to being a woman Elise admired and respected and hoped to be like someday, had also become a friend. She wondered if Meg was back from the symposium she’d attended in Boston. She’d been gone a week, and the shelter just hadn’t seemed the same without her brand of breezy goodwill and down-home common sense.

A few minutes later Elise’s question was answered when she pulled into the shelter’s parking lot and saw Meg’s sporty red Volkswagen Bug in its covered parking slot—the only perk Meg guarded like the crown jewels. Elise chuckled every time she saw the spiffy little car, which reminded her of an Easter egg. It was such an incongruous form of transportation for Meg, who was tall and big-boned, cared nothing about clothes or how she looked and routinely donated large chunks of her salary to the shelter’s coffers.

“Hi, Elise,” said the young woman sitting behind the reception desk as Elise entered the two-story building.

“Hi, Kim.”

“Meg wants to see you.”

“Oh, okay.” Elise headed straight for Meg’s office, poked her head around the open doorway and peered inside. Meg was shuffling through some papers on her desk. “Welcome back, fearless leader. How was Bean Town?”

Meg looked up and grinned. “Bean Town was great. I wowed ’em at the symposium, of course.”

Elise returned her grin. “Well, of course. I expected no less.”

“I also ate too much, as usual.” The grin faded, and Meg’s bright blue eyes filled with some nameless emotion. “Come on in. I want to talk to you for a minute.”

A tentacle of fear crept along Elise’s spine. “What’s wrong?” She walked into the small office and perched on the edge of the black leather chair centered in front of Meg’s desk.