Free Love Is Lovelier by Jean Brashear

didn’t hate Remy,” he interrupted.
    “Don’t you lie to me, William Armstrong. You and he nipped at each other’s heels for years.”
    “It wasn’t hate.” He clasped her shoulders. “It was envy.”
    She frowned. “You won. You had your father’s empireall to yourself. I still don’t understand why you walked away from it. What did Remy have for you to envy?”
    “First of all, I left because I was sick of being manipulated for my father’s ends. He had this need to control everything and everyone around him. He had no love in him.”
    “You were the prince. New Orleans was yours for the taking.”
    “Some of New Orleans,” he corrected, locking his gaze on hers. “Not the part I wanted.”
    “No,” she whispered. “You don’t mean—you can’t—it was just a foolish notion of our mothers’, a pipe dream of two best friends, to have their children marry. You had no more intention of following through than I did.”
    “You’re right,” he admitted. “I was too full of my own plans.” He drew her closer. “But that doesn’t mean that I had no regrets when you took one look at Remy and forgot I existed.”
    “It’s all about claiming rights with you males, isn’t it? Marking your turf.”
    “It was once,” he conceded. “And a healthy dose of showing Remy that I could win in my own way, rather than by default when he abandoned all my father’s designs for him.” He tilted up her chin. “But not now, Anne. Don’t even think it. This thing between us has nothing to do with competition. It’s more. Much more.”
    Before she could protest, he swung her around to face the door without letting go. “But at the moment, we’ll pretend we’re just friends who walk each morning. I’llmake coffee or open wine, your choice, and we’ll sit in the conservatory, since it’s your favorite place, and we’ll just…talk.”
    “Does anyone ever tell you no? Or better, I should ask, do you ever listen when they do?”
    He gave her what he hoped was a companionable one-armed hug and winked. “I take the fifth.”
    Then he led her inside.
     
    L UC LAY IN BED , unable to sleep. With the Mardi Gras deadline the Corbins had given him approaching in little more than a week, the pressure would only increase. This new threat would mean he’d hear from the Corbin brothers very soon. They were growing increasingly frustrated with him, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could drag his feet.
    He needed leverage, and he might have just found it. They weren’t in Lafayette, best he could tell, but they were nearby. He’d figured that from bits and pieces he’d picked up in their conversations.
    He could drop a dime to the authorities and tip them off to the Corbins’ proximity. Somehow he had to figure out what agency would be most interested, and there wasn’t much time left to act. Extradition took a long time, too long for the Marchands, but maybe he could cast enough suspicion the Corbins’ way to keep them too busy to make more mischief for his family.
    His family. He liked the sound of it, even as he recognized that his aunt and cousins would hardly feel warmand mushy about him if they had the slightest idea what he’d done already.
    What a hell of a mess he was in.
    Oh, Papa, I wanted to avenge you . As things stood now, Luc’s quest could, at a minimum, cost him his job, and probably result in jail time of his own.
    No permanent damage had been done, however, except to the hotel’s reputation. If he could find a way out of this coil and remove the Corbins in the bargain, perhaps he could figure out a means to make the rest up to his aunt. Work for lower wages. Longer hours. He was an excellent concierge, that he knew. He would put his back into it, devote himself to making the Hotel Marchand stronger than ever.
    Yeah, right. Like they would actually care about having the family black sheep’s son anywhere around. He was nothing to them, however much he wished things were