Horton discreetly bore away Meg's coat, carrying it as carefully as if it had been made from ermine or silk, rather than a flimsy synthetic blend.
She stood staring after Horton, watching her coat disappear as if she'd lost her only friend in the world. The woeful look on her face confused Parker. Perhaps he should have been nicer to her. She was way out of her league and she hadn't even set foot in the Great Parlor yet.
Her lips had parted slightly. She ungripped her hands and ran one lightly over the back of one of the gilt chairs. He liked the picture she made, her tapered fingers unconsciously sooth
in
g the fabric even as she seemed to divine its nature.
Parker had sensed her hand as she'd lay it over his arm back at the hotel. She'd offered comfort and he'd rejected her touch. Watching her stroke the chair, he pictured her hands moving over his body, smoothing their way up his legs, over his thighs, curling around the part of him that ached from the idea of this woman touching him.
He was out of his mind. She was not only a stranger, but a stranger he knew better than to trust.
But watching her hands, he read a gentleness that reassured him.
And aroused him. Too much so.
He had to stop himself from thinking of Meg in this way. To distract himself, Parker mentally reviewed the history of this particular chair.
His mother had carried on for weeks about that remarkable find. It matched an original to the house that sat opposite the Georgian writing desk and Teensy had been quite pleased with herself w
hen she'd found it in some out-
of-the-way antique shop in Charleston. Dr. Prejean hadn't been called to the house for five weeks straight after that blessed event. Parker, now in his mid-thirties, still vividly recalled that period in his mother's rollercoaster life and he'd been only seventeen at the time.
"What a lovely chair," Meg said, continuing
to smooth the rounded edge under her hand.
"Tell that to Teensy,"
Parker said, managing to speak in a fairly normal voice, "and you'll have a friend for life."
"Is that what you call your mother? I mean, to her face?" Meg had dropped her hand from the chair.
Parker wished she'd go back to stroking the velvet, then he frowned. It would be better for him if she didn't resume that sensual motion. In a short tone, he said, "Everyone calls her Teensy."
"Well, I'm not planning to," she said.
"Suit yourself." He pointed to a double-wide archway. "Everyone's gathered in the Great Parlor. Shall we join them? They'll be wanting to express their sympathy."
"Everyone?"
He heard the anxiety in her voice and was surprised to feel a corresponding empathy. "Don't worry, they're family, mostly. You married my brother, Miz Ponthier." He stressed the name. "Don't you have the slightest curiosity to know more about the life he left behind? After all, it's your life now."
He'd moved closer as he spoke and now leaned almost over her. Her chest rose and fell quickly, and even under the armor of the rather demure suit jacket, her lush breasts invited thoughts that Parker had no business thinking. "Whoa—" he muttered.
She'd closed her eyes. He tipped her chin upwards. "Look at me," he said. He waited until her lids lifted and she fixed him with her deep blue eyes. "I don't know what your game is, but Jules was my brother—"
She yanked his hand from her chin. "You didn't know your brother very well, did you?"
"What makes you say that?" Parker gave her credit for her perception on that score. His grief rose as much from guilt as genuine loss. They had never been close; the two of them had nothing in common, apart from a family that embraced its members primarily as business associates. Even in business, they'd disagreed on every decision.
Once again Parker remembered how the day Jules had left for Vegas he'd threatened to do whatever it took to stop Parker's proposal for expansion of the family sugar business. Rather than expanding, Jules was set on getting Parker to agree to the corporate buyout offer they were to have voted on this week. With Jules's death, the family meeting would of course be put on hold.
Over his dead body would he sell, Parker had told Jules in that last argument. Only now it was Jules who lay dead in the morgue.
Meg tapped him on the chest. "I bet you tried to bully him just the way you're trying to bully me."
Parker didn't answer the question. His mind was racing, thinking of Jules's threat. Jules may have had his way eased into Tulane Law
School by family influence, but he had learned the stuff fairly well. And after two previous marriages, Jules definitely knew the unusual terms of the Ponthier Family Corporation dealing with spousal shares. Capturing her hand against his chest, he said, "You didn't marry Jules for love, did you?"
"I-I don't know what you mean."
Parker narrowed his eyes. A much more innocent answer would have been,
Of course I loved him. I love him still.
"Some love match. Where'd he hire you? Between the sheets at the Mustang Ranch?"
Tugging her hand free in a flash, she slapped him hard, fast and furiously, not once but twice.
"Ooh-hoo, Parker, is that you?" A wispy voice preceded the whisper of footsteps across the marble floor.
Holding one hand to his stinging cheek, Parker turned. "Teensy," he said in a drawling voice, "may I present"—he fixed his brother's scheming bride with a look meant to tell her she'd pay for what she'd done—"Jules's bride."
Four
J
ules's bride.
Meg blanched. This slip of a woman approaching with a manicured hand outstretched in a languid gesture was technically Meg's mother-in-law. She swallowed. "How do you do, Mrs. Ponthier?"
To Meg's amazement, the petite brunette laughed in a way that sounded not at all musical or amused. "Nobody, but nobody, calls me that!"
Okay. Try again, Meg. She nodded, her mind racing, then decided not to venture any name at all. "Pleased to meet you," she said.
"Much better, dear," Meg's mother-in-law said. "I do so hate to be reminded that I married Jules's—" Her voice broke, and a sob rang from the depths of the woman's throat "—father."
Without realizing she'd done so, Meg had sought Parker's eyes. He stood, unsmiling, silent, watching his mother the way a hiker
might eye a rattler asleep in his path. Ahh. Meg glanced down at the marble floor. The solid and elegant foundation might as well have been a bog of quicksand.
Thinking of Dr. Prejean's discussion with her on the phone, she decided she'd best humor this woman and ease out of the encounter. After all, she'd soon be on her way home, free and clear of the entanglements of the Ponthier clan.
What a relief that thought was! Meg managed a smile, stepped forward, and crooking the woman's arm into hers, said, "I am so sorry about your loss."
Teensy teared up and Meg realized no matter how off kilter the woman might appear, she'd loved her son. Her mother's heart warmed to her. "If there's anything I can do to ease your loss," she said, stroking the limp, exquisitely manicured hand, "please let me know."
Teensy sighed and squeezed Meg's hand. "I am just so—" she managed to turn that simple word into about three syllables "—glad that Jules found love in his last hours on this muddled earth of ours. W-h-y"—again, Teensy managed to drag this word out with the breath only a practiced singer or yogi could produce— "it gives me such comfort to know he married the mate of his soul before his untimely demise."
Meg closed her eyes and passed her free
hand over her face. She dared not look at either Teensy or Parker. She had a feeling the highly skeptical younger brother was glaring at her and attempting to read her every thought. And as for Teensy—Meg couldn't live with herself if she destroyed this woman by revealing the truth of her marriage for hire.
Jeez. What had she done!
Teensy didn't give her time to contemplate the answer to that very serious question. Tucking Meg's hand into the crook of her arm, she bussed her cheek and said with a giggle, "You don't look old enough to have married my baby." The last word caught in the woman's throat and suddenly Meg found herself putting an arm around her sobbing mother-in-law. "There, there," Meg crooned, stroking Teensy's short, dark hair. "It's okay to cry. I cry myself, you know."
"But he's never coming back!" Teensy's voice rose to a wail and she clutched Meg's arm tighter.
Meg looked down at the woman holding onto her for dear life, then whipped her head around as she heard a movement behind them. Parker stood staring at the two of them, but he'd clearly been about to bolt.
"Don't go," Meg mouthed, all the while smoothing Teensy's head and shoulders with the same soothing gesture she used when Teddy, Ellen, or Samantha complained of a tummy ache or couldn't sleep.
Parker met her gaze, then his eyes flicked to his mother, then back to Meg. He shrugged, then said, "You've guests waiting, Teensy."
What a stupid thing to say! Meg glared at Parker, annoyed at the dictatorial tone of voice he'd used towards his weeping mother. Well, truthfully, Meg vacillated between being annoyed with him—and fascinated by Parker. His technique worked with Teensy, who dabbed at her eyes, where her eye shadow and mascara had miraculously remained intact despite her bout of tears. She patted Meg on the hand and straightened her posture.
"It is good to meet you, Miss
…
"
she smiled vacantly at Meg, then turned to Parker. "Are they in the Great Parlor?"
"Yes." Parker pointed, then after a slight hesitation, added, "Teensy, you'll be wanting to introduce your guests to Jules's widow."
"Oh, of course." Teensy smiled too brightly and Meg felt for this woman who'd just lost her son. Yet though she understood bereavement, something seemed off about the woman. Meg's husband might have died young and left her quite broke but at least he hadn't been nuts! This family, though, was one for the books.
Once again, Jules's mother took Meg's hand. This time she walked them across the rotunda and toward an archway at the far side. From the room beyond, Meg made out a babble of voices, some deep, some high-pitched. But the volume made her think of a PTA meeting
much more than a gathering due to the death of a loved one.
Well, perhaps things were different in New Orleans.
Certainly Teensy didn't look like any mother Meg had imagined in all the years of her orphaned childhood. She used to lie awake at the group home after all the other girls had drifted off to sleep. She'd make up stories about her mother and father and the family that really, really wanted her but hadn't been able to keep her. But never in the wildest of those imaginings had she ever concocted a parent like Teensy.
No, her imaginary mother figure hadn't worn an expensive knit suit with buttons that looked like they cost as much as the suit itself, nor possessed a body that must have been engineered in a lab. Neither had her imaginary mother figure sported jet-black hair and a nearly flawless ivory complexion at what must be at least fifty years of age. And she hadn't been called Teensy to her face by her one surviving son, not even in the wildest flights of Meg's imagination.
Neither had Meg married such a woman's son for the sake of earning thirty thousand dollars. That thought sobered Meg and she glanced at Teensy much more sympathetically. Who knew what drove any woman to behave as she did in order to survive?
Just then Teensy paused only a foot or two
from the doorway through which the babble of voices rose. She turned to Meg and sa
id in a low, controlled voice, "
Did he die happy?"
The mother's heart in Meg felt with keen intensity the question Teensy asked. It was in Meg's power to ease Teensy's mind. "Oh, yes."
She heard Parker's quick intake of breath and her cheeks flamed as she guessed what he was thinking. Parker assumed Jules had taken her to bed before his death. Well, let him think that. It would take him down a notch or two for him to consider Jules had gotten something Parker would never get to sample.
Meg reminded herself she'd come to the house to help Teensy. She gripped the older woman's hand and said, "I can assure you he was happy."
Teensy had fixed her wide green eyes on Meg. She lifted one finger to smooth the
line of her lipstick at the corn
er of her mouth. Then she said, "Thank you, then. No matter what anyone says about his regrettably impetuous marriage, I forgive you for not doing things the way they should have been done."
Before Meg could react, Teensy moved into the adjoining room, a bright smile splitting her perfectly toned and lifted face. "Darlings," she was saying, "I'm so glad you could come."
Was there some hidden knowledge a mother could detect? Or was Jules's mother only concerned with the niceties expected by society? Meg dearly wanted to understand why Teensy
had chosen the words she'd used, but she found herself surrounded by a gaggle of people all talking at once. To assist her in a sanity check, she looked around, seeking—she realized with a funny feeling—Parker's presence.
A strangely comforting presence.
As she digested that thought and shook hands with the first person
Teensy presented to her, a soft-
spoken woman in her early forties named Amelia Anne, her mind wrestled with that description. Why should she find Parker, a man who'd insulted her and tried to keep her from standing by Teensy's side and whom Jules hadn't trusted one whit, comforting?
Hmmm. She let herself be propelled into the stiff-armed embrace of a portly silver-haired woman who murmured a few polite phrases of sympathy. Meg would rather be pressed against an armoire by Jules's brother, she realized as the stem-faced woman disengaged herself. Surprised at her own wayward thoughts, Meg kept a polite expression pasted on her face as she reminded herself she was playing the role of a grieving widow, a task she'd do well to remember.
But still, despite the condolences on her loss, Meg found herself thinking very little of Jules and far too much of his alive and well and arrogant brother.
Parker opted to remain for the show. He leaned against one of the two marble fireplaces of the Great Parlor, thankful Horton hadn't ordered them lit despite the chill of the day. He, for one, was quite warm enough. How much of that had to do with the woman now standing in the center of the room he didn't quite know.
He had to give it to her. She was handling the greetings and thinly disguised scrutiny of the assemblage without stuttering, faltering, or fleeing out the door. None of his family were the sweet a
nd sympathetic type. Aunt Math
ilde, his father's older sister, had no use for anyone born west of the Seventeenth Street Canal, let alone some stranger who hailed from Las Vegas. His aunt was eyeing Meg through the tiny eyeglasses she wore on a silver chain.
Meg gazed straight ba
ck. "What a lovely pince-nez."
Mathilde allowed the solid line of her mouth to edge upwards. "It is, isn't it." Then she thumped her cane on the floor and reclaimed her seat beside the fireplace opposite where Parker stood.
Teensy sighed and fidgeted her hands together. "You may as well meet Kinky."
That got her! Parker almost laughed aloud as an expression of astonishment chased across Meg's face. How odd she must find them. Now that she wore that demure suit rather than the Hotel Maurepas bathrobe, Meg demonstrated a squeaky clean, All-American look. She'd no doubt grown up in a tract house with a father who worked a nine-to-five job, and a mother
who cooked, cleaned, and read bedtime stories to Meg and her siblings.
So how had she ended up married to Jules?
Parker frowned, then watched as his brother's childhood friend and all-arou
nd bad influence Kincaid "Kinky"
de LaSalle jerked himself off a sofa and sketched a brief bow to Meg.
"If you were a friend of Jules's," he said, thrusting back the hair that always fell across his forehead, "you may call me Kinky. If not, the name is Kincaid."
"I'm Margaret, but call me Meg, please." In a lower voice, she said, "What do you mean 'If I was a friend?' That's a rather odd thing to say to a man's um"—she stumbled, then finished with—"w-widow."
Kinky kinked a brow, a gesture for which he was famous. "You obviously haven't met your predecessors."
"Predecessors
…
" She trailed off and Parker realized with a shock that Meg had no idea Jules had been married before, not once but twice.
Kinky repeated the brow gymnastics. "My, my, but don't you have a treat in store for you. Well, I do hope Jules found peace in his last days." Kinky's look was close to a leer. Parker thought of moving over, standing beside her to give her a semblance of protection, but checked himself. He smoothed his hand over his cheek
where she'd slapped him. Meg could take care of herself.
"If you need any comforting—" Kinky had leaned over and gathered her hands in his "—just give ol' Kinky a call." His innuendo was clear.
Meg extracted her hands. "Please accept my sympathies on your loss. I'm sure you must be suffering.”
Kinky shook his head. "Live in the fast lane, die on the curves, I always say."
Meg wrinkled her brow.
Teensy fluttered her hands. "Kinky, do sit down and behave," she said. Then, as if the effort of that command had been too great for her, she said, "I believe I'll have a drink." She drifted to the bar set up at the far end of the room and proceeded to mix a bourbon and water.
Parker shook his head.
Meg now stood alone in the center of t
he Au
busson rug. Aunt Mathilde had gathered her daughter Amelia Anne to her side and Kinky had joined Teensy at the bar. Iso
lde, Amelia Anne's sixteen-year-
old daughter, hadn't bothered rising from the chair where she sat curled up, her ears covered by her Walkman, her nose buried in a book.
Meg half-turned, glancing towards Parker. In that swift instant, he saw a vulnerability she hadn't so far displayed. No female Daniel in a den of wild animals at this moment. Again, he
felt himself softening his stance towards her. Perhaps she had married his brother for love, impetuously, but possibly out of pure motives.
If that were the case, Parker,
he said to himself,
where were her tears back there in the hotel room when you broke the news to her?
She'd been shocked, but he'd wager a month's profit that she'd been thinking of her own welfare.
She'd taken a step toward him. Some indication of his thoughts must have shown on his face because she halted and gazed at him with a questioning look. Parker, who prided himself on his poker face, forced a smile into place and decided to play along with her game. Shoving himself from his post at the fireplace, he strolled towards her.