The Setup (8 page)

He took a breath and held it, silently telling his pulse to stop scrambling, his heart to settle down and his breathing to return to normal—whatever that was. Doing his level best to appear as if that kiss had not cut him off at the knees, Jefferson allowed her to lead the way to the tables.

As they approached the designated dining area, he saw that Blake was looking their way. Looking
his
way, Jefferson realized. And grinning. It was the kind of grin that fairly shouted
I told you so.
Blake couldn’t have looked prouder of himself if he had single-handedly invented the wheel
and
discovered fire in the space of an afternoon.

Just because he’d danced with Sylvie—and kissed her—although technically, she had been the one to kiss him—didn’t mean this was a match made in heaven. Or even in New Orleans. As far as he was concerned, it wasn’t really a match at all, just a case of opposites attracting. Temporarily.

“Saved two places for you,” Blake told them, rising from his chair.

He gestured vaguely toward the two empty chairs to his right without taking his eyes off Jefferson. To spare himself, Jefferson deliberately took the second chair, holding the one between himself and Blake out for Sylvie.

The look on Blake’s face told him that gloating had merely been postponed until the earliest opportunity.

“So the dancing part is true, if somewhat understated,” Sylvie said to Jefferson as she took her seat. When she saw Jefferson’s eyebrows draw together in a puzzled expression, she elaborated. “On the application, you put down— It said,” she amended, since he’d told her he hadn’t filled it out, “that you could dance.”

She seemed to remember an awful lot of what Emily had written down. “Did you memorize the application?” he asked. That he had never seen it was making him increasingly uncomfortable. What else had Emily said about him that might trip him up later, or make him look like a fool?

The smile on Sylvie’s lips was impossibly sexy. “Just the parts I found appealing.”

She leaned back as a server with a steaming tureen of jambalaya stopped by her chair to spoon the fragrant mixture of rice and seafood into her side dish. Directly behind her was a tall, thin young man with no hips who was offering servings of blackened ribeye. Next came an assortment of vegetables, all darkened with a Cajun sauce.

Sylvie shook her head just as the server began to transfer a portion of the vegetables onto her plate. “Hate vegetables,” she confided to Jefferson. She waited until the small parade had served Jefferson. “But now,” she told him, picking up the thread as if she hadn’t abruptly stopped, “we’re going to have to start from the beginning.”

He wasn’t sure just where she was going with this. “The beginning?”

“Yes.” With knife and fork in hand, she studied the ribeye, deciding where to make the first cut. “Since, by your admission, the application I have in my possession is mostly a work of fiction, you’re going to have to tell me all about yourself.”

Jefferson had never been comfortable talking about himself. He shrugged vaguely, searching for a way to begin a new topic. Blake was no help. He’d turned his attention to Maddy. Their heads were close together and they were whispering—sharing something intimate and amusing, judging from the way Maddy laughed in response.

“Not much to tell,” Jefferson finally replied.

Somehow, Sylvie thought, she had her doubts about that. Until he had danced with her, she would have been willing to believe that perhaps he was just a one-dimensional kind of guy. But no one who had moves like his could possibly be one-dimensional. She’d bet her private art collection on that.

“I don’t believe you,” she informed him, her voice coaxing.

He had a feeling that she could probably charm bees out of their hive if she set her mind to it.

“C’mon, Jefferson, give. Your daughter got your height and your weight right and I’m assuming she knows when you were born.”

He was about to ask her what year Emily had put down, but then he stopped. It occurred to him that Emily might have wanted to fudge that, seeing that Sylvie was more than ten years younger. And their profiles had been matched. But then, he reminded himself, he’d already made up his mind not to lie. This was not the time to go back on his decision.

“That all depends,” he said.

“On what?”

“On what she put down.”

Sylvie thought for a moment. “It said that you were born in 19—”

The last two numbers were lost as the gallery suddenly, without warning, went black.

N
ERVOUS LAUGHTER ECHOED
in the darkened gallery, chasing away the eerie silence that had blanketed the room seconds ago as guests attempted to adjust to what they assumed was yet another part of the entertainment.

Sylvie shifted in her chair. She didn’t mind the dark as long as she could still make out forms and figures. But this was pitch black and it imprisoned her.

“Hey, Maddy, I thought the object was to get people talking, not groping.” She aimed her words in the direction where Maddy was sitting. “I can’t see anything.”

“Join the club,” someone from the crowd chimed in.

Sylvie suddenly became aware of a small, steady beam of light coming from her right. When she turned, she saw that Jefferson was holding what appeared to be a tiny flashlight attached to a set of keys. The illumination it provided was disproportionate to its size.

Her uneasiness began to fade. She felt as if the
cavalry had arrived. Leaning into him, she told Jefferson, “You are turning out to be one very handy man to have around.”

The appreciative note in her voice warmed him more than he would have expected. “Emily’s gift to me two years ago for Father’s Day. In case I got home after dark and the porch light wasn’t on.”

“Remind me to send her a thank-you note.” He looked a lot more sexy in this light, Sylvie thought. Or was that the champagne talking? She’d had two glasses, and ordinarily, that wouldn’t affect her. But maybe, this once, it had. The man beside her wasn’t her type for so many reasons, and yet…

Focusing on the immediate problem, Sylvie turned toward her friend. “Tell them to turn the lights back on, Maddy.”

Maddy was already on her feet. The exasperated look on her face told Sylvie this hadn’t been planned.

“Damn straight I will,” she declared.

Here and there tiny flames of light began appearing as several people at the tables took out their lighters or struck matches to see. An uneasiness was telegraphing itself through the crowd.

Any second, Sylvie thought, panic might set in. She was having trouble banking down her own growing anxiety and she wasn’t given to that kind of thing.

When Jefferson rose to his feet, Sylvie thought that he was going make his way to the exit before the situation in the gallery turned uncomfortable or tempers flared. The sudden power failure was a damn
good reason to call an end to an evening that he probably found less than thrilling anyway. But to her surprise, Jefferson raised the flashlight he was holding just above his head and addressed the other guests.

“Everyone?” He raised his voice when only a few people looked his way. “Everyone, can I have your attention? There seems to be some kind of technical difficulty at the moment—”

“I’ll say,” a voice from the darkness cracked with less than gracious humor. Other people were heard to mumble far more caustic comments.

Jefferson ignored the grumblings. Instead, he went on speaking in a soothing, authoritative voice. “Security is being dispatched to see what the problem is. It’s probably something minor. It usually is. There’s no reason to panic.”

“Can we panic after they find out what the problem is?” that same person asked. Snickers echoed in the wake of his question.

Jefferson never missed a beat, addressing the query as if it had been seriously asked. “That all depends on what they find out.”

The voice in the darkness had no response. The faces of those closest to Jefferson looked satisfied and placated by his assurance.

Sitting down again, Jefferson turned to look at Sylvie and his hostess. There was sheer gratitude on Maddy O’Neill’s face, as if he’d just saved her from pitching over a steep cliff.

What he saw on Sylvie’s face was a great deal
more complex. All he knew for sure was that when she looked at him, he felt as if he was standing on quicksand and sinking fast.

Well, there was just no going with first impressions, was there, Sylvie thought, studying Jefferson with re-kindled interest. She made no attempt to disguise the fact that he had impressed her a great deal. She would have expected him to hang back or leave, not take charge. But that was exactly what he’d done. There was no way for him to know about security—he’d just said it for the crowd’s sake. He could think on his feet, she thought, another admirable quality.

Slow down, Syl. No need to give him a ticker tape parade yet.

Aloud, she said, “I guess you’re the type who rises to the occasion.”

On her other side, Blake laughed. “The guy comes through every time,” he told her. “Usually when you least expect it.”

Jefferson shrugged. He had little use for compliments. “I just didn’t want to see mass panic take over,” he told Sylvie. “Crowds can get ugly without meaning to.”

Maddy leaned over and put her hand on his, pressing it. “I owe you one,” she told him. “Would you mind doing me one more favor?”

The gentlemanly thing would have been to give an unqualified “yes,” but he’d learned never to jump into something feet first without knowing if it was cement or Jell-O. “And that would be?”

“Could you light the way for me so I can get to
the back room?” Maddy asked, then lowered her voice. “So I can get that security guy to do what you just told the crowd he was doing.”

“It’d be my pleasure,” Jefferson said as he rose again.

He was aware that Sylvie had popped up beside him like a jack-in-the-box. He couldn’t decide if it was because she liked his company or because she really didn’t like being in the dark alone. Either way, she was coming with him. He could live with that, he thought, suppressing a smile.

I
T WAS A BLACKOUT
. A massive power failure that not only affected the Warehouse District and the French Quarter, but sent long, thick, probing fingers into the surrounding areas.

The media got wind of it almost immediately and played it up as a colossal disaster in the making. Conflicting reports began coming in as rival stations raced to be the first to present new information for a news-junkie public. The truth was that no one knew at this point just how much of the French Quarter was actually without power.

Luc Carter knew that fate was on his side. This was the break he’d been waiting for. He’d been planning a power failure, and one had been delivered with perfect timing. The sugar he’d poured into the generator’s fuel line would put a major crimp in the Hotel Marchand’s Twelfth Night celebrations. Richard and Daniel Corbin, the people he really worked for, would be pleased.

He’d taken a major chance, though. Charlotte had sent him off to get flashlights and he’d detoured by the furnace room where the generator was kept. He should never have risked it. One of the maintenance men was already on the scene to investigate, and Luc had hurried past, grumbling about the shortage of flashlights. Returning to the scene of the crime was something an amateur would do, but that pretty much described Luc.

The Corbin brothers believed he was working for them for the part ownership they’d promised him once he managed to bring financial ruin to the Hotel Marchand, forcing Anne to sell to them. What they didn’t know was that Luc was in this for personal revenge. But in fact, his enthusiasm for his plan was starting to wane.

No, if he was accurate, his desire to wreak havoc on Anne Marchand and her family had begun to weaken awhile ago—the moment he’d begun to get to know the four Marchand sisters, who, unbeknownst to them, were his cousins, and the genteel, kind-hearted woman who was his late father’s older sister.

He couldn’t help but wonder what Anne Marchand would say if she knew he was Pierre’s son. Would she be surprised? Would she welcome him? Or would she turn him away? It was something he wasn’t going to find out. Not if he stuck to his plan, which had dovetailed perfectly with Richard and Dan’s.

Luc had idolized his father. Not that Pierre had
been around much when Luc was a kid. After giving him his name and his charm, Pierre Robichaux had abruptly left Luc and his mother one day after Luc had just turned six. Left him with memories of a charismatic man who could light up a room with his smile. Who could fire Luc’s imagination with stories of his youth in New Orleans.

It was only later that he’d learned that the man he adored had feet of clay. That Pierre was fatally addicted to gambling and to alcohol. And to women. Even so, Luc refused to allow that knowledge to diminish the way he felt about his father.

When Pierre had finally returned to his wife and son, a broken, dying man, a heartsick Luc had searched for a target to fix his anger on. Pierre’s stories of how his own mother, Celeste Robichaux, had turned her back on him had provided one.

Just before his father died, he’d extracted a promise from Luc to reclaim his rightful share of the family fortune. Pierre had also wanted him to tell Anne that he had always loved her. But Luc had silently vowed to make his grandmother, his aunt and any other Robichaux pay for what had happened to his father. Intuitively, Carla Carter desperately tried to talk her only son out of harboring such bitter feelings. She tried to make Luc see that his father had been a liar and a cheat who had not done an honest day’s work in his life.

Luc refused to listen to his mother, refused to hear a single word spoken against the father he’d worshiped and adored. Troubled, confused, he’d left the
country shortly after the funeral. After traveling for a while, he’d ended up in Thailand, working for a hotel chain run by Dan and Richard. It turned out the men, half brothers, were seasoned grifters. When they learned that he wanted to go to New Orleans, they transferred him to their hotel in nearby Lafayette.

The brothers were intent on buying out a prime hotel, but not at a prime price. Through contacts in the industry, the Corbins had sniffed out the Hotel Marchand’s precarious financial situation and set their sights on acquiring it. To drive down its value, the reputation of the hotel had to be compromised. A plan was devised to undermine the hotel’s good name and make things so difficult for Anne that she wouldn’t be able to make payments on the hefty mortgages that existed on the property. Eventually, as the hotel became a liability, she would have to sell.

Because of his background working in hotels, Luc easily secured a position as the concierge. Weaving himself into the tapestry of everyday life at the Hotel Marchand, he made himself indispensable. And so began a game of cat and mouse. He’d already engineered some minor things to upset guests. Things like embedding slivers of glass in the hotel towels and deleting reservations from the computer. The towels had been discovered by the head of security before any harm could be done, but the vanishing reservations were a black mark on the hotel’s record.

And now the damaged generator.

He should feel like celebrating, but he couldn’t help thinking of Anne Marchand’s warm smile and Daisy Rose’s impish grin.

The only one in the family who could make him remember his initial vow was his grandmother. Celeste Robichaux was every bit as hard a woman as his father had told him she was. She rarely came to the hotel, but when she did, she swept through like Catherine the Great, treating everyone around her as if they were serfs. Most of the time, Celeste looked right past him as if he didn’t exist.

With a mother like that, Luc thought, no wonder his father had left New Orleans.

Luc could hear music and happy voices coming from the courtyard. He repositioned the pile of flashlights in his arm and headed for the lobby. Maybe he’d underestimated the magic of New Orleans. Even in total darkness, the party went on.

T
HE MOMENT THEY WERE OUTSIDE
the gallery, Sylvie realized that what they were experiencing was more than just a minor inconvenience. There were no lights at all in the street.

Thoughts of disasters immediately sprang to mind.

Without thinking, Sylvie grasped Jefferson’s hand, holding on tightly, the unconscious fear she was struggling to hold at bay radiating through her fingers.

She’d been in New York City when the Twin
Towers fell. Although she was all the way across town at the time, the memory of that day was still vividly imprinted in her mind. Over time, she’d managed to bury it beneath so many others, but it was quick to surface at the slightest provocation.

Fear strummed across her nerves, refusing to dissipate. She turned toward Jefferson. “Do you think this could be—?”

She didn’t have to finish. He could hear it in her voice, see it in her eyes. “Probably not” was the best he could offer her. He wouldn’t just glibly assure her that this blackout was not part of something bigger. But the odds, he liked to believe, were against that. “Why don’t you call home?” Jefferson advised. “It might make you feel better.”

She didn’t ordinarily need reassurance. She usually had no trouble keeping a positive outlook, but for some reason, the darkness had taken away her confidence. She didn’t like feeling this way.

Sylvie had her cell phone out and was pressing buttons before Jefferson had completed his suggestion.

It took three rings before anyone answered. The seconds seemed to stretch out forever. Sylvie could feel impatience mounting within her.

As soon as the ringing stopped, she said, “Hello, Mama?”

“You sound breathless, Sylvie. Is your date chasing after you, or are you chasing him?”

Not her mother, she thought. Anne Marchand’s tongue was not nearly as tart. “
Grand-mère,
is everything all right over there?”

“Other than the fact that your mother is boring me to death with her poor skills at the chessboard, I would say that everything is all right.” A hint of curiosity slipped into the older woman’s voice. “Why do you ask?”

“Sylvie, what’s wrong?” It was her mother on the phone now. Sylvie surmised that Anne must have taken the receiver from her grandmother, who could be heard grumbling in French in the background.

“Nothing’s really wrong, Mama.” She didn’t want her to worry unnecessarily. Ever since Anne’s heart attack, Sylvie had felt very protective of her mother. As she talked, she began to twist a lock of her hair, a habit she’d had since she was a girl. “We’ve just had a power failure here at the gallery where Maddy’s having her performance event and I wanted to make sure you and
Grand-mère
and Daisy Rose weren’t sitting in the dark, too.”