Ciji Ware (10 page)

“Yeah… sure. Look Jack,” Daphne said, trying desperately to keep her cool, “you know what the deal was. You keep your distance from my brother, Corlis, and me, and we’ll do the same. So far, it’s worked out just fine and—”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Daphne,” he interrupted rudely. “Like I said, I’m in town on business.”

“What business?” she scoffed.

“I’m workin’ for Able Petroleum now… out of Dallas.” He beamed a smug smile. “I’m their chief information officer. Petrochemicals are a big part of the cotton growin’ process these days,” he explained as if she were a first grader. “The pesticides we make keep the bugs off, and the defoliants strip off the cotton plants’ leaves so the pickin’ machines can go through the fields like a hot knife through butter.”

Jack’s imagery made Daphne shudder. He probably wrote the copy in those glossy brochures that told the public what a friend to nature the petroleum industry was.

“And now it turns out I’ve got another reason to come to Natchez.”

She raised a questioning eyebrow, not really wanting to know.

Jack frowned faintly and said, “My parents and the Petrellas have bought one of those old funeral homes here in town. Part of their plan to expand the chain into Mississippi.”

“Ah. And this means what to you? I thought you hated the family business.”

“I
do
hate it, but I said, seein’ as I was heading up here anyway, I’d get the new signs put up, file the name change to Ebert-Petrella, and check out how the staff’s doing under the new management. My daddy’s gettin’ a bit long in the tooth to crack the whip, like the old days.”

I’ll just bet. I’ve heard he did more than crack a whip with his employees
…

However, all she wanted to do at this particular juncture was to get as far away from Jack Ebert as she could.

“Well. I wish you all the best in Texas, Jack… really, I do.”

Magnolia
Manners
Rule
One: Always be polite, no matter how disgusting the situation.

Just then, she glanced at her briefcase that rested on the car seat. The sheet music to
Phantom
of
the
Opera
beckoned. Swiftly, she snapped shut her case. She didn’t owe Jack Ebert even courtesy, so why was she being so nice?

“Wait, Daphne!” he said loudly, his words having a strange power to halt her in the act of extracting her car keys from the car door. She turned her head to look at his pinched face. “I’ve given… what happened two years ago… a lot of thought,” he said with only the faintest hint of condescension. “Even you have to admit that everythin’ got blown way out of proportion, and it wasn’t
all
my fault.” Daphne stared at him, speechless. “After all, I was hurt, just as much as you were when—”

“Oh, please!” she exploded, a rush of ire shooting through her entire body like a burst of adrenaline. “Screwing my brother’s girlfriend
for
months
before our wedding wasn’t such a bad thing?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Daphne. All you can do is bring up old—”

“And what about blabbing all over town that Lafayette Marchand was King’s real father?”

“You have no proof I did that!” he spat. “My cousin Vic—”

“Oh… but that whisper campaign had your forked tongue all over it,” she interrupted. “Just like I know you hacked partway through those harp strings this morning!” She grabbed her briefcase off the seat and slammed the car door. “And, surely, you haven’t forgotten when you and your gooney cousin, Vic,
kidnapped
my brother before the city council demolition hearing and locked King in a cemetery crypt in hundred degree
heat.
”

“He had air and water—”

“You could have
killed
him, you moron!” She was almost shouting now. “You were lucky King didn’t press charges and have you arrested and sent to federal prison for the rest of your
un
natural life! Now, just get out of here, or—”

“Or what?” He glanced around the parking lot, and they both noted that all the guests had made their way inside to the reception. “The Hero of New Orleans is gonna beat me up? You’re gonna hit me with your music stand? If I were you, Daphne,” he said, looking through the car window to where her harp lay on its side in its black fiberglass case, “I’d be much more watchful ’bout leavin’ things you care ’bout where they can get hurt.”

“Get lost, Jack,” she said, making no more attempts to keep her composure. “Go back to Texas and your slime ball job shilling for some polluting oil company, and leave me alone, or I’ll—”

“You’ll what, exactly?”

She had scored a hit, she knew, because Jack took a menacing step closer, cocking his head to one side in a fashion that reminded her of nothing so much as a coiled snake, ready to strike.

“Or I swear. Jack Ebert, you’ll become a six-part series on Corlis’s TV station, that’s what!” she hissed, wondering at her bravado. “Everybody in New Orleans is on to you, you creep. Go back into your viper’s nest before someone you
least
suspect chops your goddamned head off!”

“No wonder your mama hasn’t spoken to you in two years,” he said, shaking his head in mock disapproval. “You’ve got the manners of a Yankee, young lady.”

Rigid with pent-up fury, Daphne whirled in place and clicked the key lock device, her hands shaking as she secured the car. Eyes blazing, she turned abruptly to face him once again. “If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll make sure your
new
employer and anyone who counts in your life in Texas learn about every rotten thing you’ve ever done, starting with kindergarten. And this time, your crooked pals in the construction business, or your uncle, or your crazy cousin Vic won’t be able to cover it up!”

Without another word, she stalked toward the plantation house, turned the corner on the veranda, and collided with a tall, dark-haired man with two cameras slung around his neck and an aluminum tripod in his hand.

“Oh, sorry,” Sim Hopkins apologized. Then he gazed at her with a look of concern. “Are you okay? Did that guy in the parking lot finally leave?”

“Sweet Jesus,” she exclaimed, sinking weakly into a white wicker porch chair. “How much of that did you hear?”

“Quite a bit,” he admitted, setting the tripod on the veranda’s decking. “I was sitting behind a hedge over there, waiting for a warbler to show up.” A vulgar black stretch limousine—no doubt with Jack Ebert at the wheel—was just nosing into traffic on the parkway. The photographer lightly touched Daphne’s sleeve, and asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be in a receiving line, or something?”

“Yes,” she murmured, too exhausted either to speak further or to rise from the chair.

A paused stretched into ten seconds. “Actually,” Sim offered by way of conversation, “I stayed at Monmouth today hoping to hear you play again. I love your voice. You’re really quite a remarkable musician.”

Daphne was mortified to feel sudden moisture fill her eyes for the third time in one day. “That’s very sweet of you to say so…” she managed, bowing her head. A moment later, she was aware that Sim had knelt on the porch beside her.

“Hey… that guy really upset you, didn’t he?” He cupped his large left hand over her smaller one resting limply on the arm of the chair.

“Yes… yes, he did,” she whispered brokenly.

Daphne looked up to meet his eyes through her tears. His simple act of kindness nearly unhinged her in the wake of Jack’s baffling and contemptible assault.

“And no,” she added, bowing her head and gazing at his fingers, bereft of any gold jewelry. “I’m not okay. Not by a long shot.”

Chapter 4

Simon Chandler Hopkins watched the distraught young woman bury her face in her hands as she began to weep in earnest.

“My b-beautiful h-harp…” Daphne sobbed. “He c-cut the s-strings…”

A
jilted
fiancé
—
and
mortician’s son to boot
—
could
cause
such
grief?
he thought.
Figures.

He’d barely restrained himself from leaping over the hedge and strangling the guy. Now, kneeling next to Daphne’s chair, he easily placed his right arm around her shoulder. Without thinking, he pulled her against his khaki vest as a wave of crying wracked her body. Her chin bumped against his wide-angle camera lens.

“This isn’t working very well,” Sim declared, rising to his feet. “C’mon. My room’s just upstairs off the foyer. You can cry there.”

He gently helped her out of the chair and guided her swiftly and discreetly up the front staircase past a few guests so intent on finding their way to the bar they didn’t seem to notice the incongruous pair.

Daphne nearly stumbled when they passed the threshold of a door with a white enameled plaque that read
#23—Lovell
. She took no notice of the large, high-ceilinged room, with its massive plantation bed festooned with coral-and-cream striped silk hangings, antique upholstered furniture, gigantic mahogany armoire, and floor-to-ceiling windows covered with matching yards of cascading coral draperies. She also appeared oblivious to the open aluminum cases stuffed with lenses of all sizes and miscellaneous photographic paraphernalia littering a hotel boudoir elegant enough for Marie Antoinette.

“Sit there,” he directed, pointing to a brocade chaise nestled into one corner. “I’ll be right back.”

Stemming a hiccup, Daphne obediently did as she was told while Sim disappeared into the marble bathroom. He soon reappeared with a damp washcloth and a bottle of Evian water. “First aid for weeping harpists.”

“This place… has… e-everything,” she said between sobs.

“My mom sure would like those silk swags,” he joked, nodding at the ruffled drapes. She smiled wanly at his attempt at humor and reached for the washcloth to wipe her streaming eyes. “Do you really think Jack what’s-his-name is responsible for those harp strings breaking today?” he asked, taking a seat beside her on the chaise.

“They didn’t break,” she protested. “They were cut.” She appeared to be struggling to overcome another wave of emotion. “Oh, God… I haven’t cried like this in two years. H-how much did you h-hear?”

“I discreetly took leave of the hedge at the point when you predicted that someone that Jack character least expected might chop off his head,” his disclosed wryly.

“Well, it’s… a long story,” she said with a sigh, using the washcloth to make another swipe across her eyes, “and I don’t even know you.”

“After what I saw in the wee hours when that harp you played yesterday decided to do another little number on its own,” he said quietly, “I’d say we might have some strange sort of connection.”

Daphne stared at her rescuer with a shocked expression. “You heard a harp playing
here
… after I left Monmouth, Friday?” she murmured.

“We can talk about that later,” he replied, sensing she was far too upset to delve into things that went bump in the night. In the cold light of day, merely mentioning his decidedly eerie experience at three a.m. made him doubt it had ever happened.

For his part, Sim congratulated himself that his latest attempt to track the elusive warbler in the back garden had resulted in this fortuitous meeting. This angelic-looking woman had been the very person he had been thinking about as he unplugged the chargers on his two digital cameras less than twenty minutes earlier. He’d been astonished to recognize her voice on the other side of the hedge, and in fact, was guilty of eavesdropping for much longer than he should have.

Meanwhile, he watched her eyes fill again with tears and her face crumple at the onset of another bout of deep, wrenching sobs that she did her heroic best to muffle with the monogrammed washcloth.

“I-I can’t believe what that bastard did to my harp! I thought that Jack Ebert was finally out of my life!”

Sim gave her shoulders another comforting squeeze, enjoying his proximity to her halo of wonderful, curly blond hair. It wasn’t excessively blond, he mused, but a light amber hue, more like organic honey, or the bronzed summer hills north of San Francisco. He usually didn’t like curly hair on women. However, the caramel-colored nimbus that framed her expressive brown eyes and golden skin—along with the silky sage-green dress she was wearing—transformed her into a kind of seductive celestial spirit. She wasn’t particularly tall, but she had remarkably long legs, and when she’d nestled that handsome harp between her thighs, well—

He pulled himself up short. His imagination was heading in directions that weren’t very gentlemanly, given the fact he had ushered the poor woman into his hotel bedroom on a mission of mercy.

“Let me get you some more Kleenex,” he said suddenly, rising to his feet and heading for the bathroom once again. How in the world, he wondered, had this gorgeous creature gotten herself engaged to that Jack clown? He hoped she wasn’t another of those wounded birds he’d encountered in recent years in a conscious effort to find the diametric opposite of Francesca Hayes. At least Daphne hadn’t allowed her ex-fiancé to roll over her out there in the parking lot, that was for sure.