Free Snow on the Bayou: A Tante Lulu Adventure by Sandra Hill Page B

same old way, his dark Cajun eyes smoldering some hidden message. Hungry eyes, she used to call them. Except in the old days, she’d known exactly what that message meant. Desire for her. Now his eyes seemed to be sparked with anger. At her? What reason did he have to be angry?
    “What are you doing here?” she asked, making a preemptive strike.
    “Hello to you, too, Em. Long time no see, darlin’.” He hadn’t lost his Southern drawl.
    She bristled. How dare he darlin’ her? He’d walked out on her seventeen years ago with never a backward glance. And what was with the “Honey, I’m home” crap? Did he imagine he could walk back into her life and she would welcome him with open arms? Like they would be lovers again? Not a chance! Like they remained good buddies? Not a chance! “What are you doing here?” she repeated. The ice in her voice was a clear barometer of her feelings for him. She hoped.
    His lips twitched with amusement at her blunt question, but his eyes weren’t smiling.
    There was a time when that little hint of a grin wouldhave melted her heart. Now her heart was frozen solid where he was concerned.
    “Here in Louisiana or here in your shop?” he asked.
    “Both.”
    “I’m here to visit my MawMaw.”
    “For how long?”
    He shrugged.
    Emelie recalled what Bernie had told her, and now she felt guilty for her rudeness. “Sorry. I heard that Miss MaeMae’s been ill. Hope it’s nothing serious.”
    He didn’t answer, and she could tell by the way his jaw went rigid that it was very serious. Just then, she noticed Mike and Max watching the interplay between her and Justin, and without thinking, she said to Justin, “Would you like to come back and have a cup of coffee?”
    He hesitated, which should have felt like an insult, but she understood what he clearly did, too: shaky ground. “Sure.”
    She led him through Belle’s workroom and into her studio. He studied the area, both hers and Belle’s, with interest.
    “How long have you and Belle been in business?”
    “Five years,” she said, going over to the counter on the side and starting a new pot of coffee. Her hands were shaking. Darn it!
    “Didn’t your Grandmother Delphine used to live here?”
    “I’m surprised you remember that.”
    “Me, too.”
    What did that mean?
“Yeah, this house belonged to MawMaw Delphine. She left it to me when she died seven years ago. I’d been living with her for a few years before that, working for an artist over on Chartres Street.”
    She turned, leaning back against the counter. Shecould see her answer raised other questions. But instead of asking any more, he walked around the studio, examining her masks, both those already completed, resting in special, pre-formed velvet boxes, and the works in progress. “You’re very talented, Em. But then, I always knew that.” He picked up the box that had been a gift from him for her sixteenth birthday. The colored pencils were long gone, but she used it now for her assorted paintbrushes.
    Their eyes connected for a long moment as they both recalled that long-ago moment when he’d given her the gift. In those days, she’d been the only one to see any good in him, aside from his grandparents. But then, he’d been of an opinion,
If you’ve got the name, you might as well play the game
. In other words, he acted down to his bad reputation.
    “You kept it,” he said, fingering the carvings on the box, which wore a patina of aged cypress.
    She shrugged. “It’s a nice box,” she replied, as if that were the only reason she’d kept it. It was, she insisted to herself.
    Like it was only yesterday, she recalled the pure joy on his young face when he’d handed her the clumsily wrapped gift. A lump formed in her throat now, as it had then, and she feared she might cry. Why, she wasn’t sure. “Have a seat outside by the fountain? I’ll bring our coffee out.”
    His head was tilted in question, as if he wanted to ask her something, but then he