Free French Quarter by Stella Cameron

female companion had gotten too serious and he’d done what he always did, cut the cord. And that had been too long ago for a man with his kind of drive.
    “How long have you lived here?” she asked.
    “About four years. Why?”
    “I didn’t think anyone could get one of these unless…well, I know they’re difficult to come by.”
    “Unless they’ve got connections? I have.” She was wondering if what they said about Jack and the Giavanelli family was true. “You just have to know some of the right people.”
    “And have the right kind of money,” she told him.
    “You don’t believe in subtlety, do you?”
    “I didn’t take you for a man who needed pussyfooted fawning, Jack. Was I wrong?”
    “No.” In fact, he almost liked her for her directness. “Ι really will need to get back to my daughter shortly. We ought to get to the point, Celina.”
    She tipped her glass, barely touched the wine to her lips, coughed, and held the glass out for more.
    Jack raised his brows and added a few drops.
    “I’ve never been good at guessing games,” she said. “Or uncertainty. I can work as hard as Ι have to work, but until we find out what provisions Errol made for his death, I’m adrift. Sort of. Ι can run things just fine. I’ll need some help. That won’t be hard to find. What Ι need to know now is where I stand and, since you were Errol’s best friend, and you helped him get started with Dreams, Ι thought you might have some thoughts on how he’d want me to continue.”
    Jack’s courtly skills were rusty. Since Elise’s death, his relationships with women had been selected to avoid the kinds of situations that would require champagne and roses. Sensing that Celina was a woman who might respond to the gentlemanly arts his mother had started to teach him—and Elise had made him want to practice naturally—he put a hand under her elbow and gave her a serious sideways glance. “Errol always said you were his right hand, and his left. I did suggest there ought to be a bigger staff, but he held out.”
    “He held out because he wanted to spend the minimum of funds on administration. And since we confined our self to New Orleans rather than trying to go national, we managed very well. The operation is simple, Jack. I go after the kind of glamorous donations I know will pull people into an auction—and they do. Apart from Errol’s running expenses…” She choked up so suddenly, Jack got the feeling she hadn’t expected it.
    Awkwardly patting her back, he let her cry. He produced a handkerchief and pressed it into her hands. She sobbed for only a couple of minutes, then sniffed and turned her back on him while she collected herself.
    “Take a few days off,” he said. “You can’t expect to jump right back in after somethin’ like this.”
    “We have things in the works,” she said indistinctly. “Time to spare isn’t something we ever have. The children we work with certainly don’t have any.”
    “You never met Errol’s boy, did you?” Jason Petrie had been a young, too-small version of his father. “Of course, you wouldn’t have. Errol idolized that boy.”
    “Like you idolize your daughter.”
    The analogy made his skin cold. “Like that, yes. Jason had an autoimmune disorder. They put him in one of those tents, but somethin’ went wrong and they lost him. Errol just about lived at the hospital. He hated it that there were kids who almost never had a visitor.”
    “I know.”
    He just bet she did. “You knew Errol very well, didn’t you, Celina?”
    “Yes, I did. He was the first man I ever met who didn’t try to put the make on me.”
    So she said. “Errol had a hard time of it for some years, but he beat the bad stuff.”
    “You bet he did. He dedicated his life to helping other people—helping children. They became his, and their joy was his. He was a saint.”
    Jack didn’t say what he thought, that he considered that a bit rash. “I would be more than happy to hire