'Thanks.' He held out the flowers. 'You, too.”
She took the flowers, pursed her lips. 'You come courting me, Declan Fitzgerald?”
'Can you cook?”
She laughed, a thick foggy sound, and he fell a little in love. 'I got some fresh corn bread, so you can see for yourself.”
She led the way in, down the wire-straight center hall. He caught glimpses of the parlor, of bedrooms-one with an iron crucifix over a simple iron bed-a sewing room, that all managed to be cozily cluttered and pin- neat.
He smelled furniture polish and lavender, then a few steps from the kitchen, caught the country scent of baking.
'Ma'am? I'm thirty-one, financially solvent, and I got a clean bill of health my last physical. I don't smoke, I usually drink in moderation, and I'm reasonably neat. If you marry me, I'll treat you like a queen.”
She chuckled and shook her head, then waved to the kitchen table. 'Sit yourself down there and stretch those long legs under the table so they don't trip me up. And since you're sparking me, you can call me Miss Odette.”
She uncovered a dish on the counter, got plates out of a cupboard. While she cut squares of corn bread, Declan looked out her kitchen door.
The bayou spread, a dream of dark water and cypress knees with the shadowy reflection of trees shimmering on the surface. He saw a bird with bright red wings spear through the air and vanish.
'Wow. How do you get anything done when you could just sit here and look all day?”
'It's a good spot.' She took a pitcher of dark tea from an old refrigerator that was barely taller than she was. 'My family's been here more'n a hundred-fifty years. My grandpapa, he had him a good still out back that stand of oaks. Revenuers never did find it.”
She set the glass, the plate in front of him. 'Manger. Eat. What your grandpapa do?”
'He was a lawyer. Actually, both of them were.”
'Dead now, are they?”
'Retired.”
'You, too, huh?' She got out a fat, pale blue bottle as he took the first bite of corn bread.
'Sort of, from the law anyway. This is wonderful, Miss Odette.”
'I got a hand with baking. I like daisies,' she added as she put them in the bottle she'd filled with water. 'They got a cheerful face. You gonna give Rufus that bone you brought along, or make him beg for it?”
As Rufus was currently sitting at his feet with one weighty paw on his thigh, Declan decided he'd begged enough. He pulled the bone out of its bag. The dog took it with a surprisingly delicate bite, wagged his tail from side to side twice, like a whip, then plopped down and began to gnaw.
Odette put the flowers in the center of the table, then sat in the chair next to Declan's. 'What're you going to do with that big old place, Declan Fitzgerald?”
'All kinds of things. Put it back the way it used to be, as much as I can.”
'Then what?”
'I don't know. Live there.”
She broke off a corner of her corn bread. She'd already decided she liked the look of him– the untidy hair, the stone-gray eyes in a lean face. And the sound of him-Yankee, but not prim. And his manners were polished but natural and friendly.
Now she wanted to see what he was made of.
'Why?”
'I don't know that, either, except I've wanted to since the first time I saw it.”
'And how's the Hall feel about you?”
'I don't think it's made up its mind. Have you ever been inside?”
'Hmm.' She nodded. 'Been some time ago. Lotta house for one young man. You got you a girl back up there in Boston?”
'No, ma'am.”
'Handsome boy like you, past thirty. Not gay, are you?”
'No, ma'am.' He grinned as he lifted his glass of tea. 'I like girls. Just haven't found the right fit yet.”
'Let me see your hands.' She took one in hers, turned it over. 'Still got city on them, but you're taking care of that right quick.' Her thumb passed over healing blisters, scrapes, the ridge of forming callus. 'I got some balm I'll give you before you go, keep these blisters from troubling you. You got a strong hand, Declan. Strong enough that you changed your fate. Took yourself a new road. You didn't love her.”
'I'm sorry?”
'This woman.' Odette smoothed her fingernail over the side of his palm. 'The one you stepped back from. She wasn't for you.”
Frowning, he leaned closer, stared down at his own hand. 'You see Jessica on there?' Fascinating. 'Does she end up with James?”
'What do you care? She didn't love you, either.”
'Well, ouch,' he said and laughed a little.
'You've got love coming, the kind that'll knock you flat on your behind. It'll be good for you.”
Though she continued to stroke her thumb over his palm, her gaze lifted to his face. Her eyes seemed to deepen. It seemed he could see worlds in them.
'You've got strong ties to Manet Hall. Strong, old ties. Life and death. Blood and tears. Joy, if you're strong enough, smart enough. You're a clever man, Declan. Be clever enough to look front and back to find yourself. You're not alone in that house.”
His throat went dry, but he didn't reach for his tea. He didn't move a muscle. 'It's haunted.”
'What's there's kept others from settling in. They'd say it was the money, the time or some such, but what's in that house frightened them away. It's been waiting for you.”
The chill shot up his spine in a single, icy arrow. 'Why?”
'That's for you to find out.' She gave his hand a squeeze, then released it, picked up her tea.
He curled his fingers into his tingling palm. 'So you're, like, a psychic?”
Amused, she rose to bring the pitcher of tea to the table. 'I see what I see from time to time. A little kitchen magic,' she said as she refilled the glasses. 'It doesn't make me a witch, just a woman.' She noted his glance at the silver cross she wore, tangled with colored beads around her neck. 'You think that's a contradiction? Where do you think power comes from, cher?”
'I guess I never thought about it.”
'We don't use what the good Lord gave us, whatever talent that might be, we're wasting his gift.' She angled her head, and he saw she wore earrings as well. Fat blue stones dangling from tiny lobes. 'I hear you called Jack Tripadoe about maybe doing some plumbing work in that place of yours.”
'Ah …' He struggled to shift his brain from the fantastic to the practical, while his palm continued to vibrate from the skim of her fingers. 'Yes. My friend Remy Payne recommended him.”
'That Remy.' Her face lit, and any mystery that had been in it vanished. 'He's a caution. Jack, he's a cousin of my sister's husband's brother's wife. He'll do good work for you, and if he doesn't give you a fair price, you tell him Miss Odette's gonna want to know why.”
'I appreciate that. You wouldn't happen to know a plasterer? Somebody who can handle fancy work?”
'I'll get you a name. It'll cost you a pretty bag of pennies to put that place back to what it was and keep it that way.”
'I've got a lot of pennies. I hope you'll come by sometime so I can show you around. I can't make corn bread, but I can manage the tea.”
'You got a nice manner, cher. Your mama, she raised you right.”
'Would you mind writing that down, signing it? I can mail it to her.”
'I'm going to like having you around,' she declared. 'You come back to visit anytime.”
'Thank you, Miss Odette.' Reading his cue, he got to his feet. 'I'm going to like having you around, too.”
The sun beamed across her face as she looked up at him. The angle of it, the amusement in her dark eyes, the teasing curve of lips, shot him back to the dim bar in the Quarter. 'She looks so much like you.”
