Kara Lennox - A Second Chance

“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 cliché-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.”

“But almost from the beginning, I had a problem. I liked the Marchands. They treated me like family, even though they had no idea who I was. So I tried to back out of my agreement with the Corbin brothers. But it wasn’t that easy. By then they were involved with some mobster types who didn’t care who got hurt-or killed-so long as they got their hotel.”

“And you didn’t go to the police?”

“I finally did. Unfortunately, I went to the wrong cop. He was on the crime boss’s payroll. I was shot by one of the Corbin brothers and left for dead.”

Loretta gasped. This was far more sordid and complex than she’d imagined. No wonder Charlotte and Melanie Marchand had been so guarded around Luc when he’d gone to the hotel to talk about the Cajun dinner. “Oh, Luc. Is that how you got the scar on your back?”

He nodded. “I’m tough, though. The bullet nicked my liver and I lost a lot of blood, but I recovered. The important thing was that I was able to tell the police everything. By that time Charlotte and Jackson, who’s now her husband, had been kidnapped. But the police were able to rescue them and arrests were made.”

“Including you.”

“Including me. But I turned state’s evidence, and the Marchands actually came out in favor of leniency. I was charged with everything from fraud to conspiracy to theft to malicious mischief, but only the theft charge stuck. I got a two-year probated sentence, and if I stay out of trouble for five years, I can have my record expunged.”

“Oh, Luc,” she said again, sighing. “Is that everything?”

“That’s everything. Except that it was Celeste’s brilliant idea to send me here to make restitution to the family. She thought she was being pretty clever, condemning me to some backwater town. At first, I think she was hoping I wouldn’t be able to hack it, and I’d mess up my probation and end up in jail, proving her theory that I was a bad seed, just like my father. Neither of us had any idea how much I would love it here.”

Loretta was silent for a while, taking it all in. Luc was right, he’d done some pretty bad things. But she could feel his regret. And she could hear the fondness in his voice for his cousins, his aunt-even his grandmother.

“So,” Luke said briskly. “You can run screaming into the night, now, if you want. I won’t hold it against you.”

She studied his face and saw the vulnerability there. Her heart squeezed painfully. “I have no intention of running. I feel exactly the same about you as I did before you told me. I don’t care what you did. I can see with my own eyes that you’re kind and generous and hardworking.”

“Maybe you’re seeing what you want to see,” he said cautiously.

“No. You’ve made mistakes, but who hasn’t? It doesn’t mean I can’t love you. Everyone deserves a second chance, a fresh start.” She looked down at her empty cup. “Celeste was right about this stuff.”

When she looked up, she felt dizzy from the intensity of Luc’s gaze.

“Somewhere in all that,” he said, “did you just say you loved me?”

“I did.”

“You know I love you too, don’t you?”

“N-not until right this moment.” Love. But what did that word mean to Luc?

“I think I was in love with you months ago,” he said, “but since I’ve never been in love before, I didn’t recognize it.”

“Love can be very sneaky.” She reached her hand toward him, only to find he’d done the same to her. They clasped hands, and then somehow they were in each other’s arms, lying in the middle of the bed, kissing as if they’d been lovers separated for years instead of a couple of days.

Pausing for breath, Luc pulled back and looked deeply into Loretta’s eyes, stroking her hair. “I love you,” he said again. “And I love Zara, too.”

“I want you to spend as much time with Zara as you please. I know you’ll be a good influence on her-for however long you choose to stay in Indigo.” She forced herself to say that last part. But she knew she had to accept Luc exactly as he was, not the ideal she wanted him to be.

“However long? How about the next hundred years or so?”