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Once Celeste was ensconced in the back seat, she looked up at Sara. “I’d like to repay you for your kindness. Would you care to accompany me home for tea?”
The invitation took Sara aback. “I…I’d better not. I have to get back to work soon.”
Celeste waved a hand and the driver went around to the other side of the car, opening the passenger door. “I’ll have Benjamin drive you when you have to go. Please don’t waste time arguing, dear. I make it a point to get my own way. It’s one of the few pleasures left to me.”
Studying the woman, Sara noted the flush in her cheeks, which couldn’t be blamed on the heat. They’d merely exchanged one air-conditioned environment for another. No doubt Celeste had a full staff and a family at home to see to her health. But Sara still felt compelled to accept, if only to see her home safely. There was little risk. Surely this sweet, frail woman wouldn’t lead her to danger.
So she engaged in uncharacteristic small talk with the woman as the car made its way across town. After several minutes it turned off the street through an open gate and up a long winding driveway.
Sara fell silent in something approaching awe. The sprawling, ancient mansion was white, with small dormers marching along the roofline proclaiming its French architecture. She could almost imagine the centuries falling away to reveal hoopskirted ladies and gentlemen in cutaway coats sipping mint juleps on the wide veranda.
“Impressive, is it not?” Celeste said as the car drew to a stop before the house. “It was built by my ancestor Claude in 1722 for his wife, Pauline Fontenot.” Simple pride rang in the woman’s voice as she was helped from the car by the driver. Sara rounded the vehicle, and Celeste set her hand lightly on her arm as they climbed the steps. “Claude brought his young bride to New Orleans, after it was settled for King Louis XV. This house was damaged by the fire in 1794, but my great-great-grandfather, Jean-Paul, presided over the restoration himself, and made sure the structure was duplicated exactly, rather than allowing the Spanish style of architecture to influence the rebuilding. My grandson is the ninth generation to live here, although—” she made a moue of disappointment “—he doesn’t spend nearly enough time here.”
The long lineage the woman cited was difficult for Sara to comprehend. She hadn’t known her own grandparents. Family hadn’t meant a whole lot to her mother. Janie Parker had been most concerned with good times and handsome, fast-talking men. She’d made it her business to fill her life with both.
When they reached the huge, double front doors, Celeste showed Sara inside to a graceful tiled hall with vaulted ceilings supported by carved beams. After ordering iced tea from the servant who met them at the door, the older woman led Sara into an old-fashioned parlor, complete with furniture that looked as though it had traveled from France with Claude himself.
Celeste waved her to a chair facing the tall narrow windows gracing one wall. “This is my favorite room, partly because of its view of the gardens. If I were feeling more stable today I’d take you on a tour of them. It’s this awful blood pressure medication I’m on, of course. It sometimes causes the worst dizzy spells.”
“The gardens look lovely.” There was a note of wistfulness in Sara’s tone.
“They can be very peaceful.”
“Sometimes peace can be hard to find.”
“You are quite young, I think, to be so wise.”
“I’m twenty-one.” The lie came to her lips automatically as she shaved two years off her age. Amber Jennings was twenty-one. And Sara Parker’s age no longer mattered, since she’d ceased to exist six years ago.
“Ah, to be twenty-one again.” Celeste smiled at her, a dazzling display of charm that transcended her years. “I would be tempted to envy such youth had I many regrets.”
“But you have no regrets, have you?” The words came from behind them, the voice amused. Sara stilled, finding something about it ominously familiar. “Shall we credit that to clean living or a convenient conscience?”
“Nicky!” Delight sounded in Celeste’s tone, sparkled in her eyes. As the older woman offered a cheek for the tall, dark-haired newcomer to kiss, Sara stared, her feeling of foreboding changing to disbelief. Life, she’d often found, contained the cruelest of ironies. That had never been so apparent as right now.
Because the man straightening to greet her was none other than Nick Doucet.
“Amber, I’m thrilled that you will get to meet my grandson. Nicky, this is—”
“Amber Jennings,” Nick murmured, an arrested look on his face. Sara’s pulse tripped, and it didn’t escape her that he used the last name she was currently going by. She had little time to reflect on that fact, however. With his dark gaze fixed on her, he crossed to her chair, took her hand in his. Raising it, he brushed his lips across her knuckles. “What a delightful surprise.” The old-fashioned courtliness of his gesture was at odds with the pure wickedness in his eyes. “Welcome to my home.”
Heat flashed through her, owing nothing to the temperature and everything to the simmering, latent sexuality he exuded. His voice was as smooth as velvet, meant for dark steamy rooms and rumpled satin sheets. The image that description conjured up was just a little too real, and had tension spiking through Sara’s muscles.
“You know each other?” Puzzlement was evident in Celeste’s voice as she watched their byplay.
“No.”
“Yes.”
Their simultaneous but contradictory responses had the older woman’s brows climbing.
Sara felt compelled to explain, “Your grandson has come to the café where I work on a few occasions. That’s all.”
“For some reason Amber seems anxious to avoid me,” Nick added, taking a seat next to his grandmother. “What a delightful surprise to find her here this afternoon, especially after she turned down my earlier invitation.”
She gazed at him with genuine dislike. “If I’d had any idea that you were related to Celeste, you can be sure I wouldn’t have come.” In the next moment she flushed, realizing how that sounded, and sent an apologetic glance to the older woman. She needn’t have bothered. Nick’s grandmother gave all appearances of finding their conversation highly entertaining.
“So Amber rejected an invitation from you? How…fascinating.”
“She appears to have a strange, and totally unnecessary, compulsion to avoid me.” He broke off as a servant entered with a tray of iced tea.
Celeste accepted a glass and drank deeply from the cool beverage with obvious enjoyment. “Amber, please forgive my grandson. He has been outrageously spoiled by women, myself included. It does him good to be thwarted by one now and again.”
Sara took a drink of her tea. “I have a feeling he’s more in need of it than most.”
The woman’s eyes crinkled. “Again you are correct.”
“I’m sitting right here,” Nick pointed out. Lazily, he reached out to pick up his glass. As he drank, he took the opportunity to survey his grandmother critically for signs of fatigue. She looked frailer every time he came home, so he’d made his visits more frequent. Watching the indomitable matriarch of his family fade with each passing year was perhaps the only thing capable of touching his heart. “Why don’t you tell me how the two of you happened to meet up?”
“Oh, I just met Amber at the library and we hit it off,”