Family Secrets. Ruth Dale Jean

if I have a Coke?”

      “Be my guest.”

      “You want one?”

      She shook her head. “I just want to know why you’re here.”

      “Your grandmother sent me.”

      That stopped her cold. She sat down hard, as if her knees had buckled. “Grandmère?” she repeated faintly.

      “That’s right.” He dropped coins into the machine and carried the can of soda to the table.

      “Why?” She looked completely confused.

      “I’m supposed to talk you into moving back home.”

      “To Lyoncrest?” The very idea seemed to appall her.

      He nodded. “Your grandmother wants everyone close because...well, because she’s worried about your grandfather.”

      “No, she isn’t.” Her expression hardened. “Okay, he’s had a couple of heart attacks, but that was years ago. She just wants me under her thumb again—under everybody’s thumb. Well, it ain’t gonna happen.”

      He’d rarely encountered such certainty. “Even if I say please?” he wheedled, wanting to make her smile.

      His ploy almost worked. Her eyes widened and a little of her tension seemed to diffuse. “You can say please and stand on your head,” she said tartly. “My answer is still an unequivocal, unqualified, unambiguous no. I must say, I’m surprised you’d let Grandmère talk you into this.”

      “I like your grandmother,” he said.

      “I like her, too—in fact, I love her. But neither she nor anyone else is going to run my life ever again.”

      That got his back up a little. “She’s not running my life, if that’s what you’re implying. I just happen to think family is the most important thing we’ve got going for us. Maybe if you just go home for a visit—”

      “New Orleans isn’t my home anymore,” she interrupted. “It hasn’t been for a long time.”

      “Okay, if that’s how you feel.” He stood up. “I’ve done my duty, you said no, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s that. So how about joining a stranger in town for dinner, as long as I’m here?”

      Before she could respond, a rumpled twenty-something guy stepped into the room. He eyed Dev curiously. “Sharlee, Bruce wants to brief you for a planning-commission advance.”

      “Now?”

      “I’m afraid so.”

      “Okay, thanks, Eric.” She stood. “I’ll just be a minute, Dev.”

      “Take your time.”

      She left the room and he sat back down, automatically opening the can of soda and raising it to his lips. Sharlee Hollander, or whatever she chose to call herself, was really holding back. He, Dev Oliver, would sure like to know what was going on in her head.

      

      BY THE TIME she rejoined him, Sharlee had it together again. He’d blindsided her; she hadn’t been able to believe he could act as if nothing had ever happened between them, even after all this time.

      Not that it mattered. She no longer knew Dev Oliver. When she had, he’d been a college student full of the same kind of ambition that drove her. He could have changed of course, but she figured he had to be alert just to survive at WDIX.

      She hadn’t wanted to know him, not after the way he’d treated her. Over the years she couldn’t help wondering if he’d ever really been interested in her at all or if he just wanted the Lyon heiress. Certainly he’d backed off the minute he realized he’d miscalculated.

      To this day she puzzled over which it was. Why he’d felt it necessary to send her a note that would rankle until the day she died. She’d memorized the hateful words and could still recite them, ending with: “We’re young. Someday we’ll both look back on this and laugh.”

      He should live so long!

      But did she want to have dinner with him?

      A quick mental calculation told her that she had approximately seven dollars to last the six days until payday, without breaking into an already meager savings account.

      On her salary, a free meal was not to be scorned. So she swept into the employee lounge and stopped short at the sight of Dev on one of the vinyl sofas talking to a photographer. He looked up and smiled.

      His smile had always devastated her with its honest pleasure. Or at least, it had when she was young and foolish.

      The photographer also saw her and stood. “Nice guy,” he said to Sharlee. “Take him on the tour, why don’t you? Everyone’ll enjoy meeting him.” He nodded at Dev. “If you’re around long enough, I’d be glad to take you out on one of my assignments. I think you’d find it real interesting.”

      “I’m sure I would.” Dev sounded completely sincere.

      When the photographer had gone, Dev patted the sofa beside him. She responded by taking a quick step back.

      “Now where were we when we were so rudely interrupted?” she inquired, as if she really didn’t remember.

      “I’d just invited you to join me for dinner—an expensive and delicious one, I might add.”

      “That’s right. And I was just asking myself why I should. I mean, if you’re just going to nag me on Grandmère’s behalf, I’d be better off alone with a cheese sandwich.”

      He grinned and shrugged. “If you’re trying to get me to promise not to talk about home and hearth as the price of your companionship, I’m afraid I can’t oblige.” His expression softened. “We share a history, Sharlee, no matter how either of us feels about that now. We grew up together, loved the same people, struggled with the same problems. I don’t think I could spend an evening with you and not fall back on that.”

      He was right of course. She couldn’t, either. So many questions she wanted to ask him, so many things she didn’t know. Perhaps over dinner she’d find an opening.

      Or perhaps not. In any event, she’d get a good meal out of it—and he wouldn’t be able to return to New Orleans thinking he had intimidated her.

      “I suppose it would be all right,” she said, the words coming slow. “Where do you want to go?”

      “You pick. You know the territory. I don’t.”

      She thought about the opportunity. “There’s a great place up in the mountains. It’s a bit of a drive but worth it.”

      “I’ve got nothing but time.”

      He rose and, before she could react, took her hands in his. She pulled back with all her strength but short of yelling for help, she was his prisoner.

      “Thanks,” he said, looking into her eyes. “You’ll have to tell me where to go, though.”

      Oh, if only!

      CHAPTER TWO

      SINCE HER OLD CLUNKER of a car was on its last legs, Sharlee had no choice but to let Dev pick her up that evening. She’d planned on meeting him at the front door of her building, but he was twenty minutes early and she got caught without her shoes by his knock on her door.

      Without alternatives, she let him in—not that there was anything wrong with her apartment. It was clean and neat as a pin.

      Which was a situation relatively easy to maintain since she had almost no furniture. Why bother? Nothing in her life seemed very permanent.

      So all she had in her living room was a portable television, a love seat she’d bought used from a friend, a laptop computer—her pride and joy—on a folding card table with