Marley had spent the last three days trying to track down her sister, with no luck. None of Lizzie's friends knew where she was, her cell had been disconnected, and her last landlord had evicted her in June. Doing Internet research on this plantation and Damien du Bourg had revealed only that he did in fact own the property and that it was a Louisiana historic landmark, but closed to the public since it was privately owned. The house had been in the du Bourg family since its construction in the late eighteenth century, and that was the extent of what she'd been able to determine.
There had been no way to know if Lizzie was here, so Marley had hopped on a plane to find out for herself.
She handed the driver fifty dollars. "Can you wait for twenty minutes or so? I just want to make sure someone is here before you leave."
It didn't look teeming with activity. The whole house gave the feeling of having been abandoned.
"Sure. You okay going up there by yourself? I can park and walk you up." The driver suddenly looked worried, his head leaning toward her paternally.
"No, thanks. I'm fine." Maybe. She forced a smile. "I'm the well-adjusted sister. I'm just going to go in there and haul her out." She'd done it before. Marley had never had Lizzie's looks or her confidence, but when it came to protecting her sister, she would do whatever it took, and she doubted anything Lizzie did could shock her.
"You do that then." He nodded in approval. "This isn't the place for a nice girl like you, you know what I'm saying?"
What bothered her was knowing that Lizzie wasn't a nice girl, hadn't been one in a long time, and that she couldn't fix her sister any more than she had been able to fix her mother. So she just smiled at the well-meaning driver. "I know, thanks."
Marley opened the door and felt the heat hit her, heavy and invasive, filling her lungs and pricking her skin. The porch gave low moans of protest as she climbed the steep steps, her sandals making slap, slap sounds as the rubber hit the wood. Worried but optimistic, she knocked and waited. Knocked again. Waited some more. Peeped in the window and saw nothing but shadowy hulks of furniture.
Walking to the end of the porch, she leaned over, trying to see more of the property. How the heck her sister had ended up in such an obscure corner of Louisiana was a total mystery to her, and she would have doubted it was even true if it hadn't been for the letter Lizzie had attached to her e-mail. It had been a letter from one Marie du Bourg, a resident of Rosa de Montana, and a confession to her priest two hundred years earlier.
Whether it was real or fiction was almost irrelevant. Why had Lizzie attached it to her e-mail, with no explanation? And the plaintive yet polite tone of the letter had disturbed Marley, had her rereading the words several times. She sensed Marie's agitation, but she didn't know why Lizzie would have wanted her to read it. Bottom line, why had Lizzie been here and how had she gotten that letter in the first place?
"Hey," the driver called to her, the passenger window down as he looked up at her.
"Yeah?" She didn't want to leave, but she couldn't see anything but weeds and, soldiered behind the trees, a row of tiny wooden buildings slowly deflating with age.
"There's a man coming round the other side of the house. He came out of the pigeonnier."
Marley didn't really know what a pigeonnier was, but she was relieved that at least there was someone on the property. She started back across the porch, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. She was sweating from the heat and from her nerves, and she was sorry she'd worn jeans. A loose skirt or shorts would have been a better choice in this climate.
When she reached the top of the stairs, she spotted him. The man coming from the other side of the property walked with strong, graceful strides, his MP3 player dangling around his neck, like he'd just pulled it from his ears. He was tall, he was broad-shouldered, he was gorgeous. Even from a distance it was easy to tell he was a complete hottie, which was irritating. Marley didn't do well around hotties. Normally articulate, in the presence of male physical perfection she tended to make strange gurgling sounds and blush like a Victorian virgin.
Six-year-olds she worked wonders with. Men baffled her.
"Damn," Marley muttered. He was almost at the bottom of the steps and there was no way for her to run down them quickly and meet him before he noticed her. Acutely aware that this was not her best angle, she started down the stairs anyway, walking slowly so nothing on her body would jiggle. It was a futile attempt. She was a bit—okay, a lot—curvier than Hollywood standards dictated, and from down there, her thighs probably rivaled the porch columns for width.
"Hi," he said as he stopped and smiled up at her, hands going into the pockets of his jeans. "Can I help you?"
It was a brilliant smile, full of charm and wit and promise, and Marley sucked in a breath before responding. With total clarity, she saw the appeal of Rosa de Montana to Lizzie if this was Damien du Bourg.
"Hi." She tucked her hair behind her ear and moved faster down the steps. Good looking or not, he might know where her sister was, and that was more relevant than his broad shoulders and her body defects. "My name is Marley Turner and I'm looking for my sister Elizabeth Turner. She goes by the nickname Lizzie and I got an e-mail from her saying she was here."
The smile quieted, the charm cooled, and he casually shrugged, looking unconcerned. "I'm sorry, I don't recognize that name. And there is no one here at the moment except for me. I'm Damien du Bourg, the owner of this relic."
"It's beautiful," she told him, meaning it sincerely, digging into her handbag.
"I'm glad you think so."
She got out the last picture of Lizzie she had, from the previous spring when they had taken a four-day jaunt to Cancun, her gift to Lizzie for her twenty-fourth birthday. It showed Lizzie at her best, wearing a tiny yellow bikini, belly button ring flashing, her blond hair loose and flowing over her shoulders. She was smiling, her arm around Marley. It was truly regrettable that the one picture of Lizzie that Marley had to show around also had herself in it wearing a bathing suit, but at least she was holding Lizzie's son, Sebastian, who blocked most of her stomach and thighs from view. That tankini had been a serious error in judgment.
"This is Lizzie… do you recognize her?" It didn't surprise her that Damien du Bourg hadn't reacted to Lizzie's name. It was just like her sister to fall in love with a man she didn't even know. Sometimes Marley thought Lizzie was like a perpetual thirteen-year-old.
He took the picture, studied it, glanced up at Marley with curious eyes. "No, I'm sorry, I don't. But she might have come to one of my parties. I entertain frequently. Which night was she here?"