He stared at her until she reached the steps leading to the second-story porch of the big, square white house, then shouted, “Can’t we sit down and discuss this a little more?”
“See you at the meeting,” she replied. Then she turned and waved to him before disappearing with a flounce through the screen door.
It swung wide and banged out a warning as it fell back against the door frame. A loud warning.
“Are you coming down for dinner?”
Alice heard the hidden question in her sister’s demand: Are you coming down to tell me everything and I mean everything because I watched the whole thing through the window and I’m dying to know.
She wasn’t in the mood to talk. But she was in the mood for biscuits and leftover pot roast. “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
Going to the tall windows of her cozy kitchen-and-den combination on the top left side of the house, she checked to make sure he was gone. When she didn’t see him in the growing dusk, she passed a hand over her hair then headed down the steps from her private apartment to the front door of the house.
The stairs leading down from the second floor made it easy for Alice to scoot down for meals with her sister and brother-in-law. But she tried to give them their privacy, so she didn’t make this a habit.
Except for Sundays. Sundays would always be family day at Rosette House. And tonight, as the sun sank in a swirl of pink and gold across the bayou and the frogs and cicadas started singing out in the swamp, she needed to be with family. Why was dusk always such a lonely time of day?
Putting thoughts of Jonah Sheridan out of her mind, Alice admired the bright orange pumpkins and lush yellow-and-red mums Lorene had arranged on a fresh bale of hay by the door. Her sister and Jay had remodeled what used to be considered the basement into a beautiful country kitchen and a huge hearth room, complete with the original fireplace and chimney. There was a breakfast nook in the kitchen and a formal dining room and tiny powder room across the wide hall on the other side of the house. Today, the tall French doors were thrown open to the late-autumn breezes flowing through the cross-ventilated rooms.
When Alice came through the double French doors into the breakfast room, the smell of fresh biscuits and pot roast wafted out to greet her and made her think of her parents. She could almost hear her mother’s gentle laughter, could see her daddy’s twinkling blue eyes. How she missed them.
But she had Lorene and Jay and soon they’d all have a baby to spoil. “Want me to pour the tea?” she said by way of a greeting.
“Sure,” Lorene said, glancing up as if to gauge Alice’s mood. “Have you been working?”
“No. Just folding some clothes and checking e-mail, nothing special.”
Jay looked from his wife to Alice, his dark brown eyes questioning. He knew they had their own kind of language, or at least he accused them of that very thing. A language full of feminine undertones and hushed whispers, he’d say. Alice pitied the poor man. He always squinted whenever they got going with the small talk that meant big talk later. Jay wanted to understand but he never would, really. Her brother-in-law was more comfortable out on a tractor, farming the land, than he was trying to figure out women. So now, in typical, quiet Jay fashion, he just sat and listened until they’d talked all around the subject not yet mentioned.
Then he said, “Let’s say grace and get to that pot roast.”
Lorene giggled like a schoolgirl. Alice smiled and grabbed their hands. And stewed about Jonah Sheridan while Jay said a lovely blessing. When she opened her eyes, her shrewd sister was staring at her. “Okay, start talking, Alice. What did you find out from our mysterious visitor?”
Jonah was stewing away over a cup of coffee in the tiny diner on the bottom floor of the Bayou Belle Inn. He was beginning to doubt his own sanity. Why had he come here? Oh, yeah. He wanted to build a new community on Bayou Rosette and he wanted to find out about the family who’d lived across from Rosette House. Two lofty notions, but he was willing to work on both—one to keep him busy and the other to finally find some closure in his life. If a certain curly-haired blonde with a hefty attitude didn’t get in his way. Or discover the truth before he ever broke ground.
“Why you look so glum, mon ami?”
Jonah looked up to find the proprietor of the Belle staring at him with a hangdog expression. Jimmy Germain had a gray beard and a little bit of gray hair to match on the back of his round head. He was short and husky and laughed with a robust belly bounce. His wife, Paulette, was also short and wide and very friendly. They made a good team and they cooked some good food.
So why wasn’t Jonah eating his crawfish po’boy?
“I went out to look at Rosette House today,” he explained. He had to be very careful what he said since the rumors were already flying fast and furious.
“Did the girls give you a tour of the old place?”
Jonah’s moroseness lifted at that question. “They give tours?”
“If you ask real nice, sure.”
“Oh, well, then I guess I won’t be invited in for a tour. I met one of the Bryson sisters today.”
Jimmy’s grin widened and the belly bounce began as he chuckled so hard his ruddy complexion beamed scarlet. “I’m guessing it wasn’t sweet Lorene.”
“No…it was the other sister. Alice.”
“Oo-wee! She’s a firecracker, for sure.”
“You can say that again,” Jonah replied, grabbing a crispy fried crawfish tail off his sandwich. He popped the spicy tidbit in his mouth and chewed. “What’s her story, anyway? I mean, I know she’s single and she works at the Bayou Buzz and all that. But…is there something else I need to know?”
Jimmy leaned close. “That, my friend, would require about three hours of my valuable time.”
Jonah ate another crawfish. “I got nowhere to go. Talk to me.”
Jimmy’s eyes shifted as he put his beefy elbows on the mahogany counter. “Alice, she has trust issues with men.”
“You don’t say.”
Jimmy nodded. “Right after the storm when things were so bad around here, she fell for a contractor who was passing through. He took on work—remodeling and such—and he also took off with some of our hard-earned money in the process. Never finished the work.” He shook his head. “And the worst of it—Alice believed in him, thought he’d come to help us. But he was just a greedy man who’d come to take advantage of us. He took advantage of Alice’s good graces, too. He had her up to the altar, ready to marry him, probably just so he could get his hands on her inheritance. But she got wind of his shenanigans and questioned him minutes before the wedding. He denied all of it, then he blamed her for not believing in him. He left, just like that. On to the next town, I reckon. Left that pretty little bride heartbroken and humiliated. She’s not over that yet. Might not ever be over it.”
Jonah pushed the rest of his sandwich away. Alice had said as much. She’d said they’d all been taken advantage of. That some of them had been hurt.
And she was the one who’d been hurt the most, from the way she’d acted today. And no wonder. A jilted bride. Jilted by a man who’d offered her hope while he swindled everyone in town. Just as Jonah had offered her hope today with all his big plans.
“It’s worse than I thought,” he said, staring into his cold coffee. “She must think I’m like that. But I’m not. Not at all. I could never leave my bride at the altar.” Especially if she sparkled with life the way Alice did, part fire and part flowers.
Jimmy patted his meaty hand on the counter,