Cole Dempsey’s Back in Town Read online

Her father had lost more than a daughter that night. He’d lost his will to work and even to live. His business had been destroyed, his family broken. Battered beyond repair, just like Aimee.

  Nothing had ever been the same.

  “Your father lied,” Cole said. “Your mother lied. And you lied, Bryn. And we both know it.”

  Guilt was a horrible thing, but Bryn had learned to live with it. The only lie she’d told wouldn’t change the fact that Wade Dempsey had murdered Aimee. Her father’s pride, her mother’s dignity—it was little enough to leave them after they’d lost Aimee.

  And for that, to save what was left of her family, Bryn had lied. To Cole, it had been betrayal. To Bryn, it had been her only choice for her family’s survival.

  “Go away, Cole. If you can’t let go of the past, that’s your problem.”

  “Oh no, that’s where you’re wrong. It’s your problem, too—because you and your family weren’t the only ones who lied. This whole town is full of liars, and I might not have been able to prove that fifteen years ago, but things are different now.”

  Bryn’s blood ran cold. Oh, this wasn’t the first time she’d heard Cole’s conspiracy theory about the prosecution. Even at seventeen, he’d been determined that his father had been innocent. But he wasn’t seventeen anymore.

  What havoc could Cole’s misplaced, bitter loyalty create now? He blamed an entire town for his father’s downfall. And she knew he also blamed her. She’d hurt him, she knew that. But he’d also hurt her more than he could possibly realize. She’d never imagined she could be as close to anyone as she was to Aimee—until she’d fallen in love with Cole. Then she’d lost them both in one night.

  And he could still hurt her. She had a business to build, and everything depended on its success.

  “Aimee’s murder is the last thing I plan to discuss with you, Cole.” She gave her words the ring of finality, but she might as well have flung them at a stone wall for all the effect they appeared to have on Cole.

  “It’s late, and I realize seeing me again is…upsetting,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

  God, he was arrogant. “I’m not upset, Cole. I’m not bound by the past as you clearly are.” She took another step back, bumping into the column behind her.

  “Did you know I’m an attorney now?” he went on in his quiet-steel voice as if she’d said nothing. The lethal ice of his eyes prickled uneasiness up the nape of her neck. “That’s right. I worked my way through college, made something of myself that no one in Azalea Bend thought possible. Especially you, isn’t that right, Bryn?”

  He stood a breath away, and with the column pressed against her back, she had no room to get away. She was trapped, in every way possible.

  “You’re looking at the newest partner in Granville, Piers and Rousseau. That’s the biggest law firm in Baton Rouge, if you don’t know,” he continued, lifting his hand and running the tips of his fingers down the side of her face. Her pulse jumped in response. “I’m a man now, Bryn. Not a boy. I won’t be tucking my tail between my legs and running away this time. And I won’t be a victim to the Louvels any longer. I’m going to finish this, once and for all.”

  The marsh grasses down by the river shuddered in the long beat. Bryn felt her heart sink inside her. He might be wearing a plain polo shirt, both buttons undone, and laid-back jeans, but his looks were deceptively simple. His bearing alone revealed the truth of who he had become even if she hadn’t seen the sleek new sports car in the drive. Cole Dempsey was a success, but the question of what drove him was what really unnerved her.

  He was a man on a mission. But was it justice…or revenge?

  Chapter 2

  She wished she hadn’t sent Melodie home.

  The main house of Bellefleur was over nine thousand square feet, but with no one else in the mansion tonight but Cole Dempsey, it felt about the size of an airplane lavatory.

  Bryn hugged her knees up to her chest, sitting in the middle of the mahogany four-poster in the main second floor bedroom. She had her own private sitting area and a small personal office. It had been her parents’ suite, which Bryn had made over for herself. In the years following Aimee’s death, her mother had spent more time in than out of hospitals being treated for depression. Patsy Louvel had finally come back to Bellefleur—but only to one of the cottages on the grounds, self-imprisoned with her beloved camellias, her keening grief and later, a full-time nurse.

  Sometimes Bryn thought she hated Bellefleur as much she loved it, but all she knew for sure was that after more than two hundred years she couldn’t be the Louvel who let it go. She had plans, lots of them. Other families along Louisiana’s famed River Road, Highway 18, that traversed the state following the path of the mighty Mississippi, had found ways to keep their plantations. They offered overnight accommodations, tours, Old South history and craft events.

  Slowly, she would be able to finance restoration work on the house and grounds to bring them back to their former glory. Her father’s pride and outdated sense of Louvel nobility would never have allowed it, but now that he was gone, Bryn had taken over. After high school, she’d learned the historic tourism business from the ground up, working for several of the most successful historic plantations as everything from receptionist to tour guide and finally manager. It hadn’t left her with much time for relationships, but she hadn’t cared. Saving Bellefleur had been her goal.

  She was starting small, with only herself, Melodie, who worked part-time while finishing college, and the few additional employees she could afford, but the possibilities were endless.

  She was even in the process of convincing a Creole chef who had once cooked for her parents to create a restaurant at Bellefleur—if she could get the financial backing. First she had to prove to the bank that she could make a success of the bed and breakfast she’d already opened.

  Now Cole Dempsey threatened everything.

  He’d returned to unearth a scandal just when she was trying to turn Bellefleur into a tourist destination. She didn’t need talk of murder darkening her chances. Especially if Cole was determined that it was an unsolved murder. That meant the real murderer was still out there, possibly even near Bellefleur. Which couldn’t be true, but what would the mere rumor do to her business?

  The soothing palette of ivory, oatmeal and gray in the grand bedroom suite that had once been her parents wasn’t soothing tonight. Bryn rose, paced to the verandah doors, pushing back the creamy silk drapes outlined with grosgrain ribbon. She stared out at the thick, unknowable night. He’d booked two weeks already and had asked Melodie if he could stay longer. And what was worse, seeing him had upset her. Damn him for knowing it so easily, too.

  She was still in shock from seeing him, in fact. His chiseled, hard face was almost unrecognizable as that young, gentle teen who’d wooed her in the summer gardens long ago. He’d slip up from the sugarcane fields to find her, his bare muscular arms glistening in the humid heat. He would wink at her, watch her with his remarkable eyes, cast her smiles, and slowly, with his whispered words and stolen kisses, he drew her into his magic world of hopes and dreams. He’d always wanted to make something of himself. He’d been ambitious and arrogant even then.

  And she, who had known nothing but privilege, was awed by him. In those days, she’d had everything but feared her own shadow. He’d had nothing but exuded the confidence that he could do anything. Together, they’d steal away on secret dates, sometimes with Aimee’s help, and other times without it—like the night he’d tempted her down the latticed ivywork outside her window and made love to her for the first time under the star-splashed sky.

  He’d made her believe that, like him, she could do anything, too. But the truth had been that neither of them could control the events that had torn them apart.

  Damn him for coming back.

  The phone in her office rang. Bryn hurried across the aged heart-pine floor, her bare feet padding silently. While none of the visitor accommodations included telephones
for the sake of their guests’ serenity during their stay, Bryn kept phones installed in her personal office here as well as her business office downstairs. They were the only two land lines in the main house.

  “Just checking to see how your meeting went with the bank today,” came Drake Cavanaugh’s voice in response to her hello.

  Bryn hesitated, despite the fact he was her oldest friend and had stood by her ever since Aimee’s death. Their relationship had grown by gentle degrees from friendship to fondness, and only recently had Drake expressed a desire to take their longstanding relationship to the next level. His marriage proposal had taken her completely by surprise, though looking back, she realized she’d ignored the signs of his changing feelings.

  And now that Cole was back, she knew why.

  She’d walled up her emotions fifteen years ago. She’d loved Cole with her whole heart, and the day he’d broken it it had nearly killed her. She’d been protecting herself ever since. Even with Drake.

  “It went fine,” she said finally. “But I need to have a good year, that’s all. Then we’ll take a look at the books and they’ll decide if I’m ready for a loan.”

  “I’d co-sign and you could get a loan now.”

  “I know.” Bryn cradled the phone against her shoulder as she slipped into the comfortable wingback chair behind her desk. “But you know I won’t do that.” Especially now that Drake had revealed his deeper feelings for her. She couldn’t let herself become indebted to him that way, not if she wasn’t sure she would marry him.

  “You know I’ll keep offering,” he said. Bryn was quiet, and after a beat, Drake asked, “Is something wrong?”

  There was no point in keeping it a secret. Melodie was a chatterbox. The whole town would know by tomorrow. As soon as Melodie mentioned the name of their new guest, people would recognize it. Melodie was young, but even she had heard the story, if not the name of Wade Dempsey’s son. Dempsey itself was a common enough surname, but plenty of older residents in Azalea Bend would remember and put it together.

  “Cole Dempsey’s back in town.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  Now Drake was quiet.

  “I wish I were. He’s staying here. He booked a room.”

  Drake let out a curse beneath his breath.

  “He’s a lawyer now. In Baton Rouge. Have you heard of Granville, Piers and Rousseau?

  “He’s in with them?” Bryn could hear the shock in Drake’s voice.

  “Yes. Or, he said he was.”

  “Do you want me to come over? I’m in the city tonight, but—”

  “I’m fine.” As a member of the state congress, Drake spent a lot of time in Baton Rouge, had a lot of connections. He kept his parents’ old Georgian in Azalea Bend for his frequent visits to St. Salome Parish. “Maybe you could check out his story. Find out if he’s really with the Granville, Piers and Rousseau firm.”

  She didn’t really doubt Cole on that fact, but it seemed wise to check. She couldn’t think of anything else to do and she was grasping at straws. She promised Drake she would call if Cole caused trouble, but she knew she wouldn’t. Drake and Cole had never been friends, and she doubted the passage of time had lessened that tension. As the prosecutor for St. Salome Parish, Drake’s father had handled—or deliberately mishandled, according to Cole—the case against Maurice Louvel, leading to his acquittal for the shooting of Wade Dempsey. Once, years ago, she had confided in Drake about her secret affair with Cole. And the fact that now Drake had let her know about his true feelings for her could only make things worse. She was about to go back to bed when the phone chirped again.

  “Bryn, it’s Melodie. I stopped by the Kwik Pak on the way home and ran into Mr. Brouchard. I mentioned Cole Dempsey and he told me who he was. Why didn’t you tell me Cole Dempsey was Wade Dempsey’s son? I’m so sorry! I feel awful about just leaving you there.”

  “It’s all right. It’s no big deal.” Maybe if Bryn kept telling people that Cole Dempsey being back in town was no big deal, no one would pay any attention to him. Spin control.

  “Do you want me to come back?” Melodie asked. “I could get my things, spend the night.”

  “No. I’m fine. Thanks, anyway. You have class in the morning. You don’t need to be way out here.” Melodie attended college part-time in Baton Rouge.

  “He’s— Well, he’s not like I expected,” Melodie said.

  “What did you expect?” He was everything Bryn had expected and worse.

  “I don’t know. He’s so— Gorgeous. Charming. Rich. My God, did you see that Cobra in the drive? I just didn’t expect—I guess I had in mind this hired hand’s son, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, a bad boy.”

  “People change,” Bryn said briefly. “Thanks for calling, Melodie, but I’m all right.”

  She hung up. The linen-upholstered walls with their hand-stenciled white medallions seemed to close in on her. She tried to sleep, but only tossed and turned. The room felt suffocating, and her mind wouldn’t stop turning. She got up, pulled off her pajamas and put on shorts and a pink hibiscus-colored T-shirt. Silently, she slipped into the hall, padded barefoot down the main stairs—

  And slammed straight into a hard shadow at the bottom of the steps. Strong arms grabbed her, held her tight. He smelled like musk and man, and a hopeless need built inside of her.

  “Dammit, Bryn, you’ll kill yourself barreling down stairs in the dark like that,” Cole said.

  “And you would care.”

  She shook him off, trying to ignore the effect his hands had on her body. Her pulse jumped off the scale and she felt as if her heart was in her throat. It was bad enough that he was back—the last thing she could handle was him touching her.

  “What are you doing wandering around the house in the night?” she demanded, as if she weren’t doing the same thing.

  “I went for a walk down by the river.”

  Was he restless, too? Why? She wanted—and didn’t want—to know what he was thinking.

  “What are you doing wandering around in the night?” he asked in turn.

  She said nothing. In the spectral dark she could see the bright shine of his eyes and something deep inside her quivered when he reached back up and touched her cheek.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Bryn,” he said in a quiet voice. “That’s not why I came to you.”

  For some strange reason, the tenderness of his words made her want to cry.

  “Then why did you come?” she whispered tautly.

  In the teeming silence, she saw something in his eyes shift, heat, and there it was, the inexplicable seductive frisson tugging her toward him just as it had on those long-ago days in the summer shadows of Bellefleur. And she understood why she was suddenly struggling to contain tears. But before he could speak, the screech of a tire from outside pulled her away, then the sound of shattering glass broke the night.

  Chapter 3

  Something crashed on the floor of the front hall mere feet away, and there was another screeching sound. Bryn’s stomach dipped crazily. She froze for just an instant, her brain computing facts. That sound was a car, and that crash was something thrown through the window. She pushed past the hard shadow of Cole. Her bare feet raced across the wood floor and she flung open the door even as she registered the stab of something sharp and ice-hot.

  “Wait, Bryn!” Cole came up behind her, grabbed her as she would have torn outside onto the portico. The half moon that had lit the grounds earlier in the evening hid behind clouds, and beyond the splash of the porch lantern, she could see nothing but impermeable dark.

  “Let go of me,” she demanded, fighting Cole’s too-intimate arms plastering her to his too-hard body.

  “They’re gone.” He relaxed his hold.

  Bryn hit the switch in the entry hall. The overhead chandelier spilled blinding light down on the room. Her breath jammed her throat.

  Glass lay everywhere. A rust-red brick sat innocently amongst the shards. It took a beat for her to
register the fact that something was tied to it.

  She took a step toward it and cried out in pain.

  “Bryn!” Cole reached out to her again. As his arms went around her, he felt her trembling.

  He knew the last thing she wanted was his help. “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “There’s a note.” She started to hobble her way across the glass-littered pine floor, but Cole—wearing shoes—crunched straight for the brick and reached it before her. He knelt and picked it up. A small sheet of white paper was tied to it with a strand of twine.

  He ripped it off and opened it. The block-lettered words burned up at him.

  The son of a murderer isn’t welcome in St. Salome Parish.

  The old bitter fury washed through him, thick and greasy and nauseating.

  “What does it say?”

  He stood, turned. Bryn’s face was pale, anxious. She was good and freaked-out by what had just happened, and he tamped down his own rage against the past and this town and the injustice he’d waited fifteen years to make right. He handed her the note.

  She read it and lifted huge, haunted eyes to him. The small piece of paper shook in her slender fingers. “We have to call the police,” she said hoarsely.

  “Right. That’ll help.” He couldn’t stop the sarcasm that laced his words. The police in St. Salome Parish hadn’t given a rat’s ass about the Dempseys fifteen years ago and he wouldn’t be surprised if that hadn’t changed. The Dempseys’ nomadic lifestyle, moving from sugarcane plantation to sugarcane plantation every time Wade Dempsey had got drunk and in trouble, had seemed to end here. No more alcoholic binging, no more fighting and no more of the philandering that Mary Dempsey had borne with a stoic determination to keep her family together.

  They’d had three good years in Azalea Bend. Three years of putting down roots, thinking they’d found home. It was their family’s new start. With Wade on the wagon, his genuine passion for the sugarcane fields had landed him the position of plantation manager by that third year. God, Cole had been proud. And maybe, just maybe, he’d hoped even he, once merely the son of a hired hand, would be good enough for the daughter of Maurice Louvel….