Family Reunion by Peg Sutherland

Author:Peg Sutherland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

NICKI KEPT A TIGHT LID on her excitement all the way back to Bayou Sans Fin.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to share her feelings with Scott. It wasn’t even that she didn’t trust him to understand and respect what was going on inside her. Because she did. It was more a case of not trusting fate. If she let the universe, including Scott, know how optimistic she felt, might not all of it be snatched away?

“Will any of that help you?” Scott had asked as soon as they’d left The Best Little Hairhouse. “Having a last name? A town in Georgia?”

“Maybe.”

He faced her over the top of the car as they were getting in. His eyes searched her face in a way that made her feel defenseless. He could see way more than she wanted him to see, she was certain. Usually she could compose herself so well that no one could see beneath her mask. Except perhaps Maman Riva.

And now Scott.

He invited her to the cabin once they reached Cachette en Bayou, as if the little two-room fishing shanty belonged to him. It was empty this week, the cousins scattered—T-John back to his restaurant in New Iberia, Tony and Toni on a brief road trip with their band, Beau and his wife visiting her relatives, Michel sniffing after a new lady friend who had no intention whatsoever of staying in the musty little cabin.

Nicki went with him under the pretext of planning the next day’s shoot.

But in truth she went because she wanted to be with him.

They left the door open, allowing the bayou in with its scents and sounds. She sat, knees drawn up under her chin, on a narrow cot that served as sofa and bed. Scott lounged on a matching cot at a right angle to hers, legs splayed. He looked so relaxed. She envied him that.

“You’re excited,” he said. “About talking to your mother’s friend.”

She tried to deny it, but the lie wouldn’t come. “What makes you think that?”

He smiled softly. “Your eyes have fire in them.”

She blinked.

“You can hide a lot, but you can’t hide that.”

She shrugged dismissively and reached for the notebook beside her feet. Time to get back to work. He reached it with his foot first, nudging it beyond her reach.

“Forget tomorrow,” he said.

“But—”

“If you trusted life, what would you do tonight?”

The uncanny way his words echoed her earlier thoughts startled her. She wanted to jump up and leave, but she was tired of running from him and whatever it was he kept trying to force on her.

“What makes you think I don’t trust life?”

“I see that in your eyes, too.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. She had an urge to inch back, although he was certainly still a safe distance away. Sometimes she felt there was no safe distance from Scott Lyon.

“Life doesn’t treat anybody with kid gloves, Nicki.”

The soft way he spoke her name took the sting out of his pronouncement. It left her feeling naked before him, stripped of all her defenses.

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