“Exactly.” I nod.
She laughs. “Well, cheers to you, honey.” She lifts her glass and takes a long drink before someone calls her name and she drifts away.
“I couldn’t help overhearing.” Vee steps up beside me. Her eyes aren’t on me, though. They’re on Cash and Luc. Aunt Bea is gesturing between them and a gray-haired gentleman I recognize as a member of her country club.
“No big surprise,” I mutter, “since Auntie June announced it from the rafters.”
“I’m happy for you, Maggie.” Now Vee’s eyesareon mine. “But the question is, areyouhappy? Does he”—she tilts her champagne glass in Luc’s direction—“make you happy?”
Does Luc make me happy?
“Incandescentlyso,” I admit. Then I frown. “Which makes it so much worse, because…” I trail off and stare down into my champagne, watching the bubbles fizz and race toward the surface. That’s how my stomach feels anytime I’m with Luc. Effervescent.Sparkly.“Because Cash doesn’t know yet, and that makes it feel… I don’t know.” I shrug. “Dishonest somehow.”
“You sure he doesn’t know?” Her face is covered by a glittery gold mask, so I can’t read her expression.
“You think he does?” I frown at Cash, wondering if I was right earlier when I thought maybe he was looking at me like he’d guessed what was going on with me and Luc.
“I think you and Luc aren’t too good at hiding how much you’re into each other,” she says. “Even from across the room, I could see the hunger in your eyes.”
I wince. “I was hoping to keep it a secret until Luc and I decide what’s what.”
“And whatiswhat?”
A month ago, she wouldn’t have felt comfortable asking me that question. But ever since our talk on the porch swing, we’ve become sistersagain. With the nosiness and aversion to bullcrap that comes with the title.
“It’s complicated,” I tell her.
“Mmm,” she hums. “Are you in love with him?”
Her question strikes a nerve. One that’s exposed and raw. One I’ve been avoiding since I knew if I looked at it too closely, I’d see the truth, and I haven’t been ready to admit it and face the consequences.
I’m not sure I’m ready to admit it now, but the words come anyway. “Yes. I’m in love with him. And it’s bigger than anything I’ve ever felt before, Vee. So big it terrifies me.”
A smile spreads slowly across her face. Then she grabs my fingers and gives them a squeeze. “I don’t know from experience, but I’ve heard people say that’s how you know it’s the real deal, Magpie. When it scares you to death.”
We stand there, two sisters hand in hand, and I take comfort in her presence, her support. I wish I hadn’t spent so many years hiding from her behind my guilt and shame. I wish I’d had the courage totalkto her. Who knows how my life might’ve been different if I had?
She hitches her chin toward the dance floor where Luc has broken off from Aunt Bea and her country club companion. Three women have encircled him. One of them is Lucille Kidder, the biggest flirt ever to come out of the Crescent City.
“Uh-oh,” Vee says. “You better go lay claim to your boyfriend before that man-eater sets her hooks into him.”
Boyfriend…I like the sound of that.
I’ve never considered myself a jealous person, but when Lucille puts her hand on Luc’s chest and leans toward him so her boobs brush his arm, I swear I feel my blue eyes turning green. “I thought she was seeing Brett Davies.”
“Nope.” Vee shakes her head. “That ended a month ago. Word around town is she’s on the prowl for someone new.”
“Over my dead body.” I hand my champagne flute to her, grab my skirts, and stomp toward Luc and his passel of female admirers.
“Go get ’em, little sis!” she calls to my back, tossing her head back and laughing.
“Excuse me, ladies,” I say when I reach the group, carefully removing Lucille’s hand from Luc’s chest. “He promised me the next dance.”
The look on Lucille’s face says she’d like to claw my eyes out. But she has the wherewithal to recognize a lost cause when Luc wraps a possessive arm around my waist.
I have the oddest urge to stick my tongue out at her.Nanner-nanner, boo-boo.But I refrain.
Luc spins me into the middle of the dance floor as the band breaks into Fats Domino’s “Walking to New Orleans,” a slow number. Then he pulls me close, placing one of my hands on his shoulder. The other he presses over his heart. The rhythm beneath my palm is strong and steady, like the man himself.
