Sweet Talking Man. Liz Talley

coming. He was the one who’d broken off the engagement. He was the one who’d broken her heart...or at the very least ruined her grand New Orleans wedding, complete with the vows at Saint Louis Cathedral, a carriage ride through the Quarter and a honeymoon in Tahiti.

      “There,” Marcie crowed, twisting her hand, grinding the cake in good. He felt the icing slip down his face and tasted the sweet buttercream frosting. “Hope you like it.”

      He swiped the cake from his eyes in time to see Marcie rake her icing-covered hand down her gown and spin on a heel, nearly falling onto the hood of the still purring Mustang. She marched to the open passenger door, spit out some of the netting that had gotten into her mouth and glared at Leif. “And now you can go screw yourself.”

      Except she didn’t say screw. She said the other word, making him glance over at Abigail, who had earmuffed Birdie. Too late, of course.

      Leif scraped off some cake and flung it to the ground, then swiped a finger through the icing, sliding it into his mouth. “Mmm. Almond buttercream was the best choice.”

      Marcie growled at him before giving him the finger and crawling into the car. “Get me the hell away from him.”

      And with that last directive, Rachel reversed the car out of the driveway. With a small regretful wave, she aimed the shiny Mustang toward the bricked gate of the subdivision. Leif waved, then took another swipe of icing and sucked it off his finger. The cake really was excellent. He wondered if Marcie had been obligated to pay for the wedding cake she’d hemmed and hawed over for a month. Or maybe she’d picked up a random white cake and played it off as the wedding cake. He wouldn’t put it past the pretty drama queen.

      He’d loved that about her.

      At one time.

      Abigail’s head wagged between him and Birdie.

      Leif shrugged. “You know, it really is good cake.”

      The too put-together woman’s mouth opened slightly and she stared at him as though he’d grown devil horns...rather than having just gotten cake in the face from a drunken woman wearing a bridal gown.

      Birdie shimmied down the driveway, craning her neck to catch a final glimpse of the sports car. As the vehicle roared onto the highway, she spun toward them, a fantastical smile invading her face. “That was awesome.”

       CHAPTER THREE

      THIRTY MINUTES LATER, Leif stepped from the shower and shook his hair, causing droplets to fly and speckle the mirror spanning his bathroom wall. No more buttercream frosting, thank God. Only the lavender and mint of the organic shampoo his friend in Colorado made by hand. The scent comforted him, reminding him who he was, where he came from.

      Damn, Marcie.

      What kind of woman did something like what she’d just done? So over-the-top. Thank goodness he’d realized what his life would be like with the drama queen of Saint Charles Avenue and gotten the hell out of town. Of course, he probably should have broken things off before she had ordered the cake, but by that time Marcie had turned into a locomotive, bearing down on the planned wedding date full force. Once he’d agreed they should get hitched—a proposal extracted in the middle of some raunchy sex—Marcie had taken the reins and dragged him behind her on her way to New Orleans’s wedding of the century.

      Before he could say “maybe this isn’t a good idea,” wedding rings were ordered. Looking at the excitement on Marcie’s face and checking out the emerging crow’s-feet around his eyes, he’d decided marrying the daughter of old New Orleans money wasn’t a bad way to spend the rest of his life. She was good in the sack and pretty as a buttercup. So while Marcie spent the next few months booking reception halls, ordering invitations and analyzing bridesmaids’ dresses, Leif tried to envision a life of...chains.

      Because eventually that’s what his impending marriage started to feel like. Prison. His casual proposal spoken in the heat of the moment had turned into a nightmare.

      And then his mother passed away, leaving him a cryptic piece of the puzzle to her past, to a life he’d never known existed.

      He’d returned to New Orleans a week after the funeral, telling himself that finding out the truth about his past wouldn’t change his future with Marcie. But he’d awoken the next morning beside his future wife and couldn’t breathe. Not literally, but almost. His heart galloped, a crushing weight sat on his chest and his clammy palms curved around the edge of the bed, holding on for dear life.

      He just couldn’t do it.

      Marcie was a nice girl, but not his soul mate, not the woman he wanted to wake up next to each morning, not the woman he wanted to sit beside in a rocking chair, watching the sun sink over the marshlands of Louisiana. He had never wanted to live in Louisiana. He craved the mountains, thin air and people who appreciated good tofu.

      So Leif had broken the engagement three weeks before the first wedding shower. This time he’d not written a Dear John letter and bolted. He’d learned his lesson at the hands of his second former fiancée’s brother and found the balls to pull Marcie out of a gown fitting to tell her he wasn’t going to marry her.

      She’d thrown a trash can at him.

      That particular action had scared the hell out of the coffee-shop patrons sitting outside enjoying a sweltering day on Magazine Street. The trash can had spilled nasty old coffee on his new trainers, but he hadn’t had time to worry about that. Marcie picked up the nearest plate and hurled it at him, screaming “asshole” over and over. The poor man who didn’t get to finish the bagel that rolled into the street didn’t shout in outrage—he just slunk in the opposite direction.

      Leif couldn’t blame him.

      He also couldn’t make Marcie listen to reason. She was like a wounded rhino—nothing but a tranquilizer dart would calm her down. She had to burn herself out, and Leif didn’t intend to stick around for the show. Eventually, Marcie would figure out that his ending their relationship would save her greater heartache down the road.

      Guess she hadn’t internalized the last words he’d spoken—someday you’ll thank me.

      Unless the cake was a belated thank-you gift.

      Immediately after the trash-can throwing, Leif had resigned from the art department at Delgado Community College and packed up the small garage apartment he’d rented in the Garden District. Then he’d left New Orleans much the same way he’d entered it—running from a woman.

      Yeah, he’d made a bad habit of getting engaged to girls who, on the surface, seemed perfect but underneath weren’t what he needed. The broken engagement prior to Marcie had occurred three weeks before the wedding. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Jenna—she was as sweet as the buttercream frosting he’d just washed off. Her father and brother, however, weren’t as nice. Leif felt lucky to still be walking after they’d caught up with him in Beaumont.

      So Leif had regrets...lots of them. He’d escaped the wedding noose three times and regretted hurting the bystanders. But most of all, he hated that his fear of commitment had dragged three innocent women through the mire with him. Hadn’t been fair to them, but he comforted himself with the thought he’d done the right thing.

      Leif’s feet couldn’t be nailed down. He wasn’t the kind of guy who stuck...and stayed. Even though he wanted to be someone who belonged somewhere...and to someone.

      Arriving in Magnolia Bend had been an accident of fate, but even if he hadn’t gotten lucky with the position as art teacher at St. George’s, he would have come to the town that held the answer to the biggest mystery in his life.

      So the time to uncover his past was here. This place held the secrets about why his mother had run...and it held the secret of who Leif’s father was.

      Here he began, and here he would hopefully find the answer to the questions that had pricked at him