A Second Chance

“Yes, thank you.” Celeste opened the door wider and allowed Loretta to step into the warmth. As always, the B and B smelled wonderful-like home.

“Michel made us some mulled wine,” Celeste said. “We’re enjoying it with some of the guests in the parlor. You can join us if you like.”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be very good company. I’ll just sit in the kitchen.”

“All right, dear.”

Celeste walked her to the kitchen, which was permeated with the heady scent of mulled wine simmering in a Crock-Pot. She refilled her cup, then got one for Loretta. Loretta blew on it, then took an appreciative sip. “This is delicious, thank you.”

Amiable conversation and laughter drifted in from the lounge, but surprisingly, Celeste didn’t rejoin the group. She pulled out the chair opposite Loretta and sat down.

“I apologize for my behavior yesterday,” Celeste said. “It was a knee-jerk reaction toward someone I perceived had hurt one of my cubs.”

Loretta smiled at the thought of Luc as a cub.

“I found out less than two years ago that I had a grandson,” Celeste continued. “And I’ll confess, the initial impression he made on me wasn’t favorable. But I’ve kept an eye on him. And I’ve come to realize what a good heart he has. At one time in his life, he was misguided-but that was partly my fault, too.”

“Luc has to be responsible for his own actions,” Loretta said.

“And believe me, he has taken responsibility. Not like his father, not at all.”

“Luc’s father got into trouble, too?”

“To put it mildly. Pierre, my son, was a rough-and-tumble little boy, always in trouble, and I simply refused to tolerate him. I expected him to be just like his older sister-demure, obedient, perfectly behaved. The harder I clamped down on him, the worse his behavior became. But I never made any attempt to understand him.

“By the time he was a teenager, it was open warfare. And he left home as soon as he was able-and I never saw him again.”

“That must have been terrible,” Loretta said, feeling a bond with Celeste as a mother. “I don’t know what I would do if Zara left me.”

“I pretended it didn’t bother me, but of course it did. For a short while he communicated with Anne, his sister, unbeknownst to me, and she tried to talk him back home. But his story was that I’d kicked him out and disowned him. And, looking back, I can see how he might have seen things that way. I was incredibly harsh, but I guess that’s what I thought the boy needed. I never dreamed he would disappear for good.”

“We all do the best we can,” Loretta said. “Being a parent is the hardest job on earth.”

“I’m telling you this not to get your sympathy, but to provide some background that you might find useful when you talk to Luc.”

“Thank you.”

Car lights coming up the driveway signaled Luc’s return, and Celeste quickly stood. But she didn’t leave right away. She poured yet another cup of the mulled wine and set it on the table. “Give Luc this. It loosens the tongue and mellows the mood, as I’ve just proved.”

By the time Luc walked through the kitchen door, Celeste had gone. “Loretta.” He had on an old, beat-up leather jacket and his most faded jeans, making him look the perfect rebel. The cautious, guarded expression on his face fit perfectly with the image.

“Luc.” Earlier, she’d been burning with things she wanted to tell him, but now that the moment had arrived, she was strangely bereft of words. Well, there was one easy thing she could start with. “Thank you for finding Zara.”

Luc shrugged. “Like I told Alain, she pretty much found me. She wanted me to be a hero.”

“You are a hero. Not everyone would drop whatever they were doing to look for a missing child-especially the missing child of a woman who’s been so horrible to you.”

“Whatever piece of bad road you and I have traveled, I wasn’t going to hold it against Zara.”

“No, you wouldn’t.” She extended the cup of wine toward him. “Celeste says you should drink some of this. It’ll loosen your tongue and mellow your mood.”

“Is there more to say?”

She nodded and swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. This was even harder than she’d thought it would be. “I’m sorry for the way I’ve acted.”

“It’s your business if you don’t want anything to do with a convicted felon. Especially given your history.”

“Maybe. But that’s not a decision I should make without knowing the whole story. You wanted to tell me, and I wouldn’t let you, and that was wrong.”

He accepted the wine and took a big gulp, then looked at it, surprised. “What is this stuff?”

“Mulled wine. Michel made it.”

“That explains the kick.” He pulled out a chair and sat down. “Loretta, if you want the whole story, I’ll tell you. Every sordid detail. I wanted to tell you before, but you were so stressed out about the music festival, I figured you had enough on your plate. But I planned to tell you right after the festival. Even though I knew it might end our relationship.”

“So tell me now.”

“I don’t know that it will make any difference. I did some terrible things.”

She knew she had to hear what those things were. A part of her wanted to tell him it didn’t matter, she would love him no matter what. But she’d been so stupidly trusting with Jim.

“I confess, I did panic when I discovered you had a record,” she said, “because all I could think about was Jim-sticking up a convenience store and shooting a man because he didn’t open the cash register fast enough. But you’re not Jim. And I can’t imagine you did anything like rob someone.”

He didn’t immediately reassure her he hadn’t, which gave her only a slight unease. This was Luc, sweet, kind Luc.

“I’ll tell you the whole story,” he said. “Do you mind if we get comfortable first? It’s kind of long.”

They moved to Luc’s quarters, where, for lack of any other place to settle, they sat on the bed. Luc stretched out, propped up with some pillows, and Loretta slipped off her shoes and sat cross-legged, still clutching her mug of mulled wine.

“I already told you about my father,” Luc began. “How he made peace with my mom and me before he died. But that wasn’t the whole story.” He paused, as if he were looking back in time. “On his deathbed, he made me promise that I would claim the family legacy he’d been denied. His mother and sister and her family were worth millions, he figured, and he thought I should get my share. Or maybe, what he really said, was that I should make peace with them. My memories might be less than accurate, because I was pretty angry with his family. They’d given my father a raw deal.”

“Celeste told me that part. It sounds like maybe he was treated unfairly.”

“He brought it on himself,” Luc insisted. “Pierre Robichaux was always the victim, always being wronged. But I didn’t understand that at the time. I was a walking cliche-the angry young man.

“Still, I didn’t do anything about it for a long time.” Luc explained that he’d left home after his father’s death and kicked around the world, talking his way into jobs at luxury hotels, leaving when he got bored.

Then he went to work for the Corbin brothers, who used their small hotels in Thailand to defraud people. When their crimes started to catch up to them, they decided to move back to the States and expand their business there.

Luc had found the perfect way to seek his revenge through the brothers’ scheme to acquire a property in New Orleans’ French Quarter. The Hotel Marchand, owned by his aunt, was ideal for their purposes, since it was already in financial trouble. Luc joined the staff as a concierge, and his job was to work from the inside to ruin the hotel’s reputation so the owners would be forced to sell-at a bargain-basement price.

“And that’s what you did?” Loretta found it nearly impossible to picture the Luc she knew doing something so hateful.

“I did,” he confirmed. “At first, it was fairly innocuous. I tampered with the generator and it failed during a power outage. I mixed up reservations for a society wedding party, and I leaked a story to the tabloids about a celebrity staying with us.”

“Oh, Luc.”