Free Bourbon Street Blues by Maureen Child Page B

that the settlement we made earlier just isn’t fair anymore.” She leaned back into the sofa. “Why, the tariffs I’m forced to pay are just monstrous.”
    “Not my fault new regulations came into place.You agreed to your share of the company and that’s all you’re getting from me, Frannie.” Parker dropped onto the sofa opposite her. “I’m tapped.”
     
    F RANNIE BATTLED BACK a ripple of nervousness. He was too…indifferent. Removed from this conversation. From her. Even at their worst, she had been able to bring Parker around with a few smiles and maybe a tear or two. Though she was loathe to admit it, he now seemed immune. But she couldn’t allow Parker to slip out of her life, taking his name with her. Her own family line went back several generations, but the LeBourdais family fortune had done considerable shrinking over the last fifty years or so. When Frannie married Parker, her lifestyle had changed dramatically.
    And, she acknowledged, she’d become complacent over the last ten years. She’d grown accustomed to the easy wealth, the prestige that his family name had given her. She had been able to live exactly as she wanted. Her affairs were discreet—she made sure no one discovered that she preferred women to men. Her own father would disown her if he knew. Such a God-fearing man, he’d slap the letter L on her shirtfront and toss her into the street without so much as a trust fund to keep her warm.
    Her separation from Parker hadn’t affected her lifestyle at all. But a divorce was going to put a serious crimp in her position in New Orleans society. And that was something she would never accept lightly.
    After ten years, Parker was suddenly demanding that divorce. Demanding that they put an end to their marriage legally. Why? What had pushed him over the edge? What had made him decide that his freedom from her was worth fighting for? Was that little redhead behind all this?
    Well, if she was, Frannie could fight her. And win.
    After all, she’d convinced Parker ten years ago that she loved him. How hard would it be to do it again?
    She took a long drink, ran her tongue across her top lip then leaned toward him, making sure he got a good glimpse of the pale pink lace bra she wore beneath her dress. “What would you say if I told you I wasn’t interested in getting any more money out of you, darlin’?”
    He looked skeptical. “I’d wonder what you were up to.”
    She smiled despite the sting of the insult, set her crystal tumbler down onto the table in front of her and stood. Walking around the table, she sat beside him and ran the tips of her fingers up and down his arm.
    “Parker, honey, the truth is, the closer this divorce comes, the more I’ve been thinking about…well… us. ”
    “Frannie—”
    “Now, let me talk for a minute here, and you just listen, all right?” Her fingertips drifted from his arm to his shoulder and down across his chest. She slid them neatly beneath the collar of his shirt and slowly stroked his bare skin.
    Parker shifted uneasily.
    Frannie hid a smile. Really. Men were just all too simple to manipulate.
    “Honey, I don’t think we gave us a real chance, do you?”
     
    H E LAUGHED and grabbed her hand, closing his fingers around it tightly. “A chance? We were married ten years, Frannie. That’s chance enough for anybody.”
    She pouted and Parker absently tried to remember just how often she’d used that same routine to try to wheedle her way around him. Too damn often, he thought, unmoved.
    “Now you’re just bein’ stubborn.” She leaned in closer, blew softly against his neck, then touched her mouth to the underside of his jaw.
    And he felt nothing.
    Absolutely nothing.
    “Parker, we could start over. Just the two of us. I could be a good wife.”
    “Maybe,” he said, and jerked his head back so that he could look into her eyes. And there he read the truth. There was no passion. No need. “But not to me.”
    “You’re being