Love Is Lovelier Read online

  If the decision were left up to her, she would have retreated to her rooms and put space between them. Time to think.

  William, however, was battle-tested, once a young maverick who’d dueled with captains of industry, and won. Now he was one of them. He’d grant her space…but not too much.

  And she really had missed him. “Give me ten minutes,” she answered.

  He chuckled. “You forget—I’ve been married and raised a daughter. I’ll start on the paper and coffee and count myself lucky if you’re down in thirty.”

  “Then you’ll be surprised,” she retorted.

  “My dear Anne, it would not be the first time. I’ve come to count on you for a great deal of spice in my life.” Once again, his gaze held warmth and promise, as if her faux pas had never occurred.

  Or as if he truly understood.

  Maybe he could. Perhaps her love for Remy wasn’t the only one in the world. William had lost his mate, too.

  Lifted by hope, she winked at him. “Just you wait. I’m not through startling you yet.” With that, she crossed the courtyard quickly, headed for the stairs that led to the family quarters above the bar.

  At the top of them, she paused. Glanced back.

  He stood there, tall and strong.

  Still watching her.

  HE’D ALMOST HAD HER.

  For long seconds, she’d been his at last. The girl he’d known, the one his mother and hers had wanted him to marry.

  He might have had a chance, if she’d never met Remy.

  But he hadn’t been ready back then, and neither had she. Determined not to knuckle under to her overbearing mother, Celeste, Anne had been a willow, bending rather than breaking. Buying time, rebelling in her own quiet manner.

  He’d had his own plans, not yet of a mind to settle down. Then the firm his father had chosen to update The Regency’s interior had hired her as an intern. She’d encountered The Regency’s young genius chef, Remy Marchand, William’s rival for his father’s favor. Bennett Armstrong had been a firm believer that competition sharpened the killer instinct, that both William and Remy would be honed to a gleaming edge by the heat of their fight for dominance in the hotel.

  Remy had won one battle, lost another. From the day Anne had set eyes on Remy and he on her, there had been no one else for either.

  But when Remy had abandoned Bennett’s designs for a chain of restaurants featuring Remy’s cuisine, in favor of owning his own hotel and restaurant, William had captured his father’s clear favor. Bennett had pushed William to beat Remy at his own game, to use The Regency’s leverage to harm the infant Hotel Marchand, but William had chosen his own path. He walked away from his father’s hotel and created his own empire. Married a lovely woman and had been blessed with a daughter, Judith, who now worked with him.

  Only after his father’s death had William returned to New Orleans and added The Regency to his chain. Over the next twenty years, he and Isabel had lived a good and happy life until he’d been widowed eight years ago. Off and on, his and Anne’s lives would touch, if distantly. He would float offers to purchase the Hotel Marchand, but Remy—and Anne, he was forced to admit—always refused them. Their social circles would cross now and again, and it was impossible to be in New Orleans and not know the names of Remy and Anne Marchand—or William and Isabel Armstrong, for that matter. His nephew Jackson was once involved with their daughter Charlotte, back in high school.

  But mostly, their lives were separate. William traveled a lot, and Anne and Remy were absorbed in their large family and their business. He’d long ago written off a boy’s interest in a lively, magnetic girl with hazel eyes and long dark hair. Now he was much sought-after by New Orleans hostesses and had learned to be careful of the many socialites who wouldn’t mind snaring him and moving into the Garden District home that was much too large for him but which he couldn’t quite decide to leave.

  Then, four years ago, Anne had become a widow.

  He hadn’t rejoiced as he once might have thought. Her devastation was obvious to all. For a time, he’d considered making an offer for the hotel, but only too soon, he and all of New Orleans had watched in admiration as she valiantly battled to keep the hotel afloat in a struggling economy to which even his own hotel had not been immune. The difference was that he had other resources to bring to bear.

  Anne had not. She’d taken out a second mortgage, choosing that over owing her mother money, he supposed. Celeste could well have afforded it, he was certain.

  But Anne not only had grit; she had pride. Perhaps too much of it.

  She had buckled down, worked harder, if possible, with her eldest daughter Charlotte at her side. Slowly, they’d begun to turn the corner—

  Then, last fall, her heart had rebelled. A heart attack—mild, thank God—had felled her. She’d been hospitalized, her daughters had gathered round to take up the slack. She’d acceded to their wishes and moved into Celeste’s Garden District mansion just around the corner from his.

  And William had decided to act. Many years had passed since their teenage flirtation; more than a few hard feelings had erupted between him and her husband. There might be no future for them or any common ground they could inhabit.

  But he had vowed to find out.

  “Hah!”

  He blinked, and there she stood. “Thank you, Robert,” she said to the man settling her in her chair. “William, I’d like you to meet the finest executive chef in New Orleans, Robert LeSoeur. Robert, this is William Armstrong, who mistakenly believes his chef at The Regency is better.”

  “We’ll just have to prove him wrong, then, won’t we?” The younger man extended his hand. “A pleasure, Mr. Armstrong.”

  “I’ll have to admit I’m impressed already. My chef doesn’t cook at breakfast.” William rose and completed the handshake.

  “As executive chef, I rarely get the chance to cook these days, but I still like to pitch in every once in a while. Besides, your chef isn’t planning to marry the boss’s daughter.” Robert winked at Anne.

  Anne laughed. “Your position was secure long before Melanie arrived. My guess is that you and Charlotte have an early meeting.”

  He looked only a little startled. “Your daughters would do well not to forget just how much you manage to pick up even when they’re determined to shield you.”

  “My daughters,” she said tartly, “would do well to remember who taught them this business.”

  “Only a fool would wade into the midst of Marchand women and their intrigues.” Robert laughed. He bent to kiss her cheek. “Nice to meet you,” he said to William, his eyes clearly curious about the two of them.

  “You’ll see me around more often,” William promised.

  The younger man’s eyebrows rose nearly to his hairline.

  Anne merely arched one of her own as she waved. “Have a good day, Robert.”

  As Robert hustled away, William could only imagine how this would add fuel to the fire of Charlotte’s skepticism and Melanie’s resistance to any man replacing their beloved father.

  Too bad. His own daughter was even less welcoming of the notion, but this was between him and Anne.

  Who glanced pointedly at her watch. “It’s now fifteen minutes, and we spoke with Robert for at least five of them.”

  “Two,” he said, merely for the sake of argument.

  “Five,” she insisted.

  “You drive a hard bargain, madame.”

  “When one comes up against a master negotiator, one must persevere,” she rejoined.

  “I haven’t won nearly all I intend to, Anne.” He kept his gaze locked on hers.

  “I’ll commit to breakfast,” she challenged. “Then we’ll see where things go.”

  He thought of the way she’d looked in the water, the feel of her in his arms. One of the chief tenets of successful negotiations was patience. He’d had to demonstrate it by bucket loads thus far.

  He could do more, even if it killed him.

  Anne Marchand
was a lot of trouble.

  But the challenge energized him. “I’ll call your breakfast and raise you dinner this evening.” He paused. “With coffee after. At my house.”

  Her generous mouth curved and her eyes twinkled. “I’ll see your dinner. We’ll flip for coffee after.”

  “Done.” He laughed and saluted her with his cup.

  He kept a lucky coin in his pocket for just such an occasion, one he’d carried since college.

  Lucky because both sides were heads.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “GOOD SAVE, LUC,” Charlotte Marchand said to the hotel’s concierge as he grabbed for the handle of the conference room door. The phone in his pocket had been vibrating with more frequency as the staff meeting wore on.

  Luc Carter had a feeling who it was and didn’t want to answer.

  A dangerous proposition. The two men who had put him in place here were turning up the level of violence as the clock ticked down to their Mardi Gras deadline.

  Charlotte was staring at him, and he realized he’d allowed too long a time lag. “Just doing my job,” he answered the woman he increasingly admired, to his chagrin.

  His cousin. His late father and her mother were siblings who’d been estranged since before Luc’s birth. Luc’s own mother, a cocktail waitress, one of Pierre Robichaux’s many fleeting fancies. He’d even married her under a false name, Poiret.

  Pierre had vanished for good when Luc was six, only reappearing when he was dying. All he’d left Luc was a legacy of bitterness and a taste for revenge.

  One that was waning as he grew to know the Marchand women.

  But it was too late for that to matter. He was in deep water and swimming hard to keep from drowning.

  “Of course it’s your job, but that doesn’t negate the fact that you pour yourself into the hotel at a time when we really need you.” Charlotte skirted the table and approached him. He wasn’t tall at five-ten, but the top of her head barely reached his jaw. Those who looked at her and saw only a dainty brunette made the mistake at their peril. Charlotte was as Type A as they came, a restless woman whose life was dedicated to saving her family’s legacy.

  The one he’d already done much to endanger.

  Including stunts like erasing all evidence of the room block for last week’s wedding of two very important and politically-connected New Orleans families.

  “I’ll get to the bottom of this snafu if it’s the last thing I do,” she told him. “The hurricane badly strained our financial resources. We can’t afford this negative publicity. Theft and vandalism during the power outage, lost bookings, the presence of high-profile guests being leaked to the media—it’s beginning to feel like a campaign, not just a run of bad luck. If only I could find the common thread….”

  The Corbin brothers had promised Luc an ownership position in exchange for assuring that the Hotel Marchand would fall into their hands like ripe fruit before Mardi Gras. Given that his father’s relatives had turned their backs on him years ago, that Luc and his mother had struggled to get by when they were owed a portion of the Robichaux wealth—

  Once the plan had seemed tailor-made for him to exact a pound of flesh from those who’d been so callous. Who’d let his father die in disgrace and penury. Who wouldn’t have cared, even if they’d known Luc existed.

  There was only one problem. His grandmother, Celeste Robichaux, was exactly the woman his father had described to him—unyielding and unforgiving. Heartless. A woman who valued family reputation more than the ties of blood.

  But his aunt Anne and her daughters were polar opposites of his grandmother. He liked them more all the time. Longed to reveal his identity and join the fold.

  The Corbin brothers, however, had a different agenda.

  And held the noose of his past behavior, slowly tightening it around his neck.

  Just then, the phone vibrated again.

  “Everything will work out,” he promised Charlotte as he took a hasty departure.

  If only he could figure out how to make that happy ending happen with two predators on the hunt.

  “WHAT A LOVELY little girl,” Anne said to the guest proudly displaying the next in a seemingly never-ending packet of photos of her grandchildren. “You must be so proud.”

  “Oh, absolutely. If only they weren’t so far—” The woman’s eyes swam. “Do you have grandchildren?”

  “A three-year-old girl.” Anne smiled at the thought of her darling Daisy Rose. “But I suspect she’ll have a cousin this time next year.”

  “She lives here?”

  “Oui. I’m so sorry yours live so far from you. I can’t imagine not being able to see her on a whim.” She patted the woman’s hand. “Perhaps you and your husband could use the Hotel Marchand for a family reunion. My husband and I raised our children here.” She pointed across the courtyard toward the family quarters. “We understand how important family is and do our best to make every guest, however young or old, feel that this is their second home. Have you seen our stock of riding toys?” She gestured around her. “Many a child has played in this courtyard. And for those times when the adults have other plans, we have a superb roster of highly-trained nannies. I’ve selected each one with an eye to whether I would trust her with my beloved Daisy Rose.”

  The woman’s eyes grew round. “Oh my. What a wonderful idea! Next year is our fiftieth anniversary. What a splendid celebration that would make!”

  Anne ignored the stab of pain at the thought that she and Remy had only been granted thirty-seven years together, and those had flown past as if they’d been ten. She found her smile again. “Perhaps you’d like to chat with Denise Sinclair. She manages all our events bookings and can tell you about next year’s calendar.”

  “I believe I would. Where would I find her?”

  Anne spotted Luc at the courtyard doors leading into the reception area. “Luc, may I ask your help?”

  The guest’s eyes widened at Luc’s blond good looks. “He’s a heartbreaker, isn’t he?”

  “The ladies do seem to take to him.” Anne smiled. “Mrs. Branson, this is Luc Carter, our concierge. Luc, would you please arrange for Mrs. Branson to meet Denise as soon as possible? She and her family might be interested in having a fiftieth-anniversary celebration at the hotel.”

  “Enchanté, Mrs. Branson.” Luc bowed over the woman’s hand, and Anne bit her cheek as the guest’s eyes seemed poised to roll back in her head. “I would be delighted to take you to Denise. On the way, would you perhaps like to see our honeymoon suite? It seems to me a location well-suited for a couple celebrating fifty years of love.”

  “Oh, well, my goodness—”

  Luc tucked the woman’s hand into his elbow. “Please. I would be honored.”

  Well done, Anne thought. She nodded to Luc.

  He winked back at her over the woman’s head, then led her away.

  “Mère.” Charlotte called from behind her. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, doucette.” Anne accepted her daughter’s embrace. “How are you today?”

  “Behind already.” She indicated Luc and the guest. “Problem?”

  “Not a bit. After a conversation about her grandchildren, who live too far away from her, I merely suggested that the Hotel Marchand might be an excellent venue for a family reunion. Turns out that Mr. and Mrs. Branson will have their fiftieth anniversary next year, so Luc is taking her to Denise by way of the honeymoon suite.”

  “He’s really good. I thought we’d never find a decent replacement for Alphonse, but Luc couldn’t be more suited if he were a member of the family.”

  “Sometimes it almost feels as if he is.”

  “You’re sad today. Because of the talk of a fiftieth anniversary?”

  Anne shook off her tristesse. “I’m just fine.”

  “You and Papa should have had seventy years. A hundred.”

  Anne swallowed the lump in her throat. “I would have cherished every second.”

  “I wish I thought
I—” Charlotte broke off in mid-sentence.

  Her expression completed it, however. At least for a mother who adored her. “You’ll find your one and only, chère.”

  Sorrow chased over her daughter’s lovely features. “I don’t think so, Mama.” Anne had come to associate the use of the Cajun mama, rather than the Creole mère with the presence of strong emotion in her eldest. “You have three daughters who’ve each found the love of their life. That beats the odds these days.”

  Charlotte straightened, squared her shoulders. “And anyway, the next love affair in the Marchand family appears to be taking place in some strange venues, like the pool at dawn or the restaurant for breakfast.”

  “Robert has a big mouth.” Anne was not pleased to feel the need to squirm. “William and I were merely having a friendly breakfast.”

  “He knows you’re back in your quarters here?” She shook her head slightly. “Of course he would. The queen probably dispatched him to return you to the castle where she can keep an eye on you.”

  Anne knew she shouldn’t encourage her children’s private nickname for her mother, Celeste, but they were all adults.

  And the name was apt.

  “She’s not the only one who watches me a little too closely for my taste,” Anne said with an arched eyebrow, glad to turn the topic from William.

  “If we didn’t, you’d be back at work full-time—don’t try to deny it.”

  “I am simply lending a hand. It’s not meant to take away from the superb job you’re doing as general manager.”

  The temper that Charlotte seldom let free was simmering now. “Mama, you had a heart attack only four months ago, and it’s been a struggle from day one to get you to take it easy.”

  Anne drew herself up to accentuate the inch in height she had on her eldest. “My doctor has given me a clean bill of health. I’m probably in the best shape I’ve ever been in my life, and I’ll thank you—”