The Devil's Luck Read online

  “I don’t want to try again, darlin’, not for a long while,” he said. “I’d like to wait another year or two. Figure out why you got so sick. Give us some time to work out logistics, and some more time for just the two of us. Things are going so well for you. I want you to have it, if that’s what you still want. You need to know that I just want you. This past year with you on the road so much… then watching you get so sick the last few weeks… None of the rest of it matters to me anymore. I just want you.”

  Q felt the same icy disappointment clutch her heart as she had when the doctor advised her to wait at least six months before trying to get pregnant again. The part of her that had realized she did, in fact, want to be a mother, wanted back what she’d lost as quickly as possible.

  “I want it back,” she whispered.

  “I know you do, darlin’. But I want to be married to you for the rest of my life more than I want a baby,” he replied, pulling her tightly to him. “Something made your blood pressure go so crazy and you get so sick. We need to find out what that was.”

  “You’re right. I know you’re right. How did it go with the investors?” she asked, not really wanting to discuss it further.

  “Alright, I guess. The number on paper wasn’t quite as big as the number they mentioned before. Then Aaron called, and I told them we’d have to table the discussion.”

  “Good,” she said. “Don’t sell the Cove. Not yet. What if I can’t have babies? What if I’m defective?”

  “It happens, darlin’. You’re not defective. Something was wrong this time, is all.”

  “You don’t know that. What if something’s broken in there?”

  Ben kissed the top of her head. “We had sex once without protection and you turned up pregnant. Does that sound like something’s broken to you?”

  “I think it was five times, Ben.”

  “You know what I mean,” he replied. “One night.”

  “One night and one morning.” She yawned.

  Ben’s warmth and the narcotic comfort of food, wine, and painkillers finally pulled her towards unconsciousness. Her eyelids grew heavy and she fell asleep.

  Chapter 4

  Three Catholics, Two Jews, and

  a Baptist Walk in a Bar

  “Yvonne, sit the fuck down. You’re making me nervous,” Q said to her sister-in-law. Yvonne was pacing the bathroom floor, periodically pushing Q out of the way so that she could check her own reflection while Q finished applying her minimal make-up.

  After the last interruption caused Q to put mascara on her eyeball instead of her eyelashes, she finally lost her temper. Yvonne sat down on the edge of the claw foot tub before quickly standing back up.

  “Are you sure I look okay?” she asked.

  Q turned and looked her up and down in growing irritation. Yvonne had smoothed back her stylishly short, blonde hair to perfectly frame her face. The sleeveless, green silk dress she’d chosen framed her body equally well, showing off her long, toned legs, and her well-defined collarbone.

  “I told you not to wear heels,” Q replied, refusing to compliment her sister-in-law, knowing full well that Yvonne was already aware of how good she looked tonight. “Sanger is only five-ten, five-eleven at the most.”

  “But I’m only five-ten,” Yvonne complained.

  “Those stripper heels make you almost as tall as Ben,” Q corrected. At six-foot-five, Ben was the tallest of his siblings, but not by much. His four sisters towered over Q, and while Yvonne was the shortest member of Ben’s immediate family, her shoe collection hid that fact quite well.

  Yvonne sighed and stepped out of the stilts on her feet that were masquerading as three-hundred-dollar designer pumps.

  “You win,” she sighed, defeated. “What am I going to wear on my feet?”

  “What’s wrong with your pedicure?” Q asked. “It’s a nice night. Y’all wanted to eat out back.”

  “But you’re wearing shoes,” Yvonne whined.

  Q kicked off her own heels, flinging them across the room with a thud. She quickly pinned up her dark curls into a sloppy pile at the back of her head, giving up on making any foreword progress towards outer femininity for the moment - having decided that consuming a large glass of vodka was much more important for her sanity.

  Earlier in the afternoon, Ben had insisted that Yvonne take Q out of the house for a girls’ day, after which Yvonne had dragged Q from the nail salon to half a dozen clothing boutiques on Magazine, finally ending up at a spa for, what Q considered to be, a very slimy mud mask.

  In his latest, futile attempt to cheer up his sullen wife, Ben had failed to remember that said sullen wife would have preferred a day doing practically anything else other than what Yvonne had planned. Six hours of sisterly closeness was reaching the limits of Q’s tolerance, especially since Yvonne had spent a sizable percentage of those hours talking incessantly about Aaron Sanger, and arguing whenever Q injected reality into her fantasy.

  At the nail salon, Yvonne had said, “So, I remember he said he likes music. Do you know what kind? I mean, he couldn’t dance to funk at all, so that rules that out…. I bet he loves opera. He looks like someone who enjoys opera.”

  When Q had corrected her theory with the truth, telling her that Sanger loved music but preferred the sad, lonesome cowboy variety, her sister-in-law had insisted that it was just a front, saying, “Well, maybe when he’s out in the world, trying to protect that tough-guy, loner-cop image, but I bet he listens to opera when he’s alone with his thoughts.”

  Q had stared at her in disbelief while Yvonne had continued to muse about all the ways Sanger was hiding his real self from his two best friends and Q had mused about throwing up her breakfast, just for old time’s sake.

  At the first boutique, Yvonne had considered cooking dinner instead of her brother saying that, as a single man, Sanger probably only ever ate frozen pizza. When Q had mentioned her recent discovery that he made the best matzo ball soup she’d ever eaten, Yvie had countered with, “Anyone can open a can, Q. I’m talking about real food.”

  Then, finally, at the spa, while trying not to think about the mud that was caking on her face, Q had listened to Yvie’s very long-winded imaginings of what Sanger’s mother had been like, all the while describing almost the exact opposite of the woman about whom Sanger had told Q on multiple occasions.

  Q had interrupted her, saying, “Yvie, Yael was an oncologist. He called her a lioness. Tori called her a grizzly bear. Israeli women are typically pretty tough. She did four tours in the IDF, for Pete’s sake...”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, Q,” Yvonne had retorted in the face of facts.

  It had been the final straw and Q had sat up, pulling off the cucumbers that covered her eyes. “Yvonne Marie Bordelon, you do know that Aaron Sanger is a real man, right?”

  Yvonne had turned her head and lifted one of the cucumbers to regard Q. “Of course, I do. What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve been talking about a man all afternoon that sounds like just the perfect man for you. However, the man that you’ve been describing is not Aaron Sanger,” Q had said sternly. “Aaron is a good man and a kind man. He also happens to be one of your brother and my best friends. He does not listen to opera. He is not a brooding Lord Byron-esque poet turned cop. He snores. He eats too much sugar. He holds grudges like you wouldn’t believe. And he’s shut himself down for the last year since Tori killed herself. You are going to fuck this redo up if you do not shut up and start acting like a sane person. It’s taken me months of trying to get him to warm up to the idea. So, knock it the hell off. Just be yourself and stop trying to make this into something it’s not.”

  “But we had such an amazing few weeks together…” Yvie had started to argue.

  “No, you had four or five amazing dates over a year ago. Four or five dates that were bookended by him finding out that his girlfriend was married to Stanley Gerard at the beginning and figuring out that she killed her stepson and tricked Aa
ron into knocking her up so she could inherit all of Stanley’s money at the end. If he didn’t have trust issues before, he definitely has them now. You have to slow down. Tonight is a reset all the way back to date number one, you understand me?”

  Thankfully, the spa had been the last stop on the girls’ day hell-trek and Q was spared several hours of Yvonne pouting. By the time Yvonne had dropped Q off at home, she’d come back to reason.

  “There’s just something about him that I can’t let go of,” Yvonne had said. “I know I’m being crazy, even for me. I barely know him, and I just miss him.”

  Unfortunately for Q, Yvie’s return to the world of facts and logic had slashed her confidence, creating the bundle of raw nerves and anxiety that was currently pacing Q’s bathroom floor. Q finally took pity on her.

  “Come on, sissie,” Q said, gently. “You need a drink.”

  Yvonne shook her head. “No, I don’t know. What if he thinks I’m some kind of party girl...?” Her eyes widened, and her jaw fell open. “That’s it, isn’t it? It’s because I drank wine at lunch those times even though he couldn’t because he was on duty later. That’s why he doesn’t want to go out with me, isn’t it?”

  Q snapped, “Fuck, Yvonne, what is wrong with you? You know what? Fine, then I need a drink. You’re driving me crazy with this shit. It’s just dinner. He’s not going to propose. Christ!” she exclaimed. “If you keep acting this way, he’s not even going to stay for dessert. And he fucking loves ice cream!”

  “Really, what’s his favorite flavor? Chocolate, right? He looks like he likes chocolate.”

  Q screamed in aggravation and left the room without looking back, stomping downstairs and into the kitchen. Ben was stirring some form of vegetable-based ambrosia on the stovetop. He put the lid back on the pan and moved to greet her.

  “Your sister’s driving me crazy,” Q said.

  He picked her up and kissed her until the tension in her shoulders released and she forgot all about Yvonne and her Aaron Sanger obsession.

  “Have some sympathy. She’s acting just like me, right after I met you,” he said, still holding her a foot off the ground.

  “Then you’re both nuts. Neither one of us is worth this level of insanity. It’s just dinner, for fuck’s sake,” she said. “Down, please.”

  Ben set her back on the floor and kissed her again. Yvonne joined them, sitting down at the kitchen table in a defeated pose.

  “He doesn’t like me,” she said simply. “Every time I called him after Tori died, he barely said a word to me. Why doesn’t he want me? I should just give up. I should have given up months ago.”

  Ben winked at Q and moved to the freezer, pulling out a frozen bottle of patience for Q to enjoy. She poured herself and Yvonne a drink and sat down across from her at the table.

  “Yvie, honey, I know you’ve built up this whole romance in your head, but you really are going to freak him out if you act like this tonight,” Q said calmly, sipping her drink. “Remember what happened on your first date?”

  “Don’t remind me,” she said, frowning.

  “You get one crazy card. One. You start telling him about what a wonderful life you could have together again, when you hardly know the man, and he’s going to run. And, honestly, I wouldn’t blame him if he did.” When Yvie didn’t say anything, Q continued, “Sweetie, he went through something terrible last year and he’s barely on the other side of it. Besides, if he really was as great as you seem to think he is, do you think he’d still be single?”

  “I guess not. Sure as hell isn’t his looks that are keeping him alone,” Yvie said.

  Ben called over his shoulder from the stove, “I like to think that I look at least as good as Aaron, and I was single for a decade. Maybe he just hasn’t met the right woman.”

  “Maybe any woman he gets into his bed can’t sleep at night because he snores so damned loud,” Q retorted, jokingly kicking Yvonne under the table.

  “Does he really snore?” she asked, relaxing slightly.

  “Like a freight train,” Q replied.

  Ben turned from the stove and folded his arms, giving his wife a stern look.

  “What? Don’t take that tone of posture with me, Ben Bordelon,” Q scolded. “You’ve heard it. Who would want to sleep next to that?”

  Yvie laughed. “I don’t know. A man who looks that good is worth wearing earplugs for. Why is he single?”

  “Maybe it’s because my wife spends so much time with him, he doesn’t have any room to put down roots of his own,” Ben said.

  “You’re being ridiculous, Ben,” Q replied. “I’ve been on tour for six months. He’s on his own plenty.”

  “And how often do you talk to him while you’re on the road?” he asked, already knowing the answer was nearly every day.

  “Ben, he’s all alone,” she said.

  “He is not,” Ben replied. “I work out with him almost every day.”

  “I know. And you force the poor man to talk about what happened while he’s spotting you.”

  “He needs to talk it out.”

  “No, he needs to move on. Not wallow in it.”

  “His girlfriend killed herself. You don’t know what that’s like,” he said, putting his hands on his hips.

  “Neither do you,” Q argued back, even though it was only true on a technicality. Two of Ben’s girlfriends had been murdered in their beds by a mutual acquaintance who’d eventually turned his attention to Q after he’d framed Ben for murder.

  Ben scowled at her, pursing his lips and raising both eyebrows. “You’re serious right now? I don’t know what it’s like to have a girlfriend die?”

  Yvie slammed her hands down on the table. “Girls, girls, you’re both pretty. And if you ask me, it’s both of your faults he’s single. Any woman who meets the two of you is probably scared shitless you’ll eat her alive.”

  Thankfully, a rhythmic knocking from the front door stopped the same two-minute micro-argument they’d had a hundred times from completing itself. Sanger was the closest thing Q had to a sibling and because Ben loved him like a brother, too, they had competing ideas on how best to help their closest friend recover from his loss.

  “That’ll be Tom and Camilla,” Ben said. When Q gave him a questioning look, he explained, “I invited them this afternoon while y’all were out. Thought it would be less pressure on everyone if it was a dinner party, not a double date.”

  Q stood up and pulled him down to kiss him. “You are a brilliant man.”

  He grinned at her. “I have my moments.”

  She walked through the living room to open the front door and found Tom holding a six-pack of Purple Haze and Camilla holding a bouquet of sunflowers. As usual, Q caught her breath when she saw Tom’s wife. One of the most perfect creations of the New Orleans genetic pool, Camilla St. John-Wills’ pale gray eyes and dark skin were enhanced by the sky-blue sundress she was wearing. She wrapped Q into a rose-scented embrace.

  “Heard you’ve been having a time of it this week,” she said, softly.

  When Camilla let go of her, Tom leaned down to kiss Q on the cheek and said, “Ben told me what happened, babe. I’m real sorry. Guess we’re going back on the road after you do your little angel routine with Dark Harm after all.”

  Q shook her head, fighting back the tears that were already forming at the corners of her eyes. “We should talk to Charlie and JJ about it. But I really think I might be all toured out for the time being. All these Stanley Gerard memorial gigs are starting to make me feel like a ghoul. I’m thinking it might be time for a change of pace.”

  Unexpectedly, Tom flashed a broad grin as he and his wife followed her into the house.

  “Thank the good lord,” he said. “Touring’s for single people. Camilla’s been running the numbers, and we’d be fine just going back to running the Burlesque a couple times a month and doing the wedding circuit. The extra money we are making doesn’t justify me not seeing my wife two weeks a month.”

 
They walked to the bar in the foyer and Q fixed Camilla a bourbon.

  “We agreed to give it a year, Tommy,” Q reminded him. “We had to buy the van; that’s cutting into it.”

  “No. I want to meet with Charlie. Let Camilla and Ben come, too. I think us dumb musicians might need a math teacher and a businessman to help sort this out,” Tom said, sitting down on the couch. “Plus, whether Charlie likes it or not, they’re involved in the business, too.”

  Q took the six-pack from him and went to the kitchen to put it in the refrigerator. As she opened one of the bottles, she said to Ben, “You ought to come hear this.”

  Ben and Yvonne picked up their drinks and followed her into the living room. Q handed Tom his beer.