Gift of the Black Virgin (7 page)

And she threatened me with blackmail! Not a
nice thing to do to your best friend.

So although part of her wanted to, she didn’t
make the call.

But after a few days, when she was pretty
much all packed and organized, Jo decided she had to. She couldn’t
leave the country without at least
trying
to apologize.

So one evening, she called Brenda at
home.

“Hi, Bren? It’s me.”

“I know.” Brenda’s voice was ominously devoid
of any emotion.

“How
are
you?”

“Uh, good.” Brenda paused and Jo could almost
hear her sharp mind revving as she planned her attack.

But it didn’t come.

“I’m doin’ pretty damned good, you could say.
Where are you?”

“At my mom’s. I’m flying out in a few days
and I’ve been thinking about you a lot, Bren.”

“Yeah. Me too,” Brenda said, her voice
softening.

Jo caught her breath in her throat. Then she
said, “I’m so sorry, Bren.” She could feel the tears threatening to
spill.

There was another pause, then she heard,
“Yeah. Me too.”

Jo didn’t expect that. It wasn’t Brenda’s
style. Loyal, yes. Forgiving, not so much.

“It would… um, it would really mean a lot to
me if you would come to my wedding.”

Jo was shocked as she heard the words come
out of her mouth. She hadn’t intended to offer them.

“Uh, well… sure. I mean, I think I could do
that. When is it?”

Jo gave a nervous little laugh.
“Christmas.”

No one wanted to travel during the holiday
season if they could help it. Brenda was certain to turn her
down.

“You mean next month?”

“Yeah. It was kind of sudden.”

“Are you knocked up?”

Jo was surprised at the assumption, and
couldn’t help laughing. “No, no. Christmas was Luc’s idea, and it
works for me, so there it is. Can you come? It’ll be in Nice.
Please?”

“Yes,” said Brenda. “I’d love to come to your
wedding, sweetheart. But only if I can bring a date.”

Chapter Five

Jo didn’t believe in ghosts. Or at least she
didn’t
think
she believed in ghosts. In truth, growing up in
Seattle, on the rain-washed Pacific coast, she hadn’t really
thought about the supernatural world at all. But now that she lived
in France, in a two hundred-fifty-year-old house, she found herself
thinking about ghosts a lot.

She wouldn’t admit it to Luc, but their new
home frightened her. When she’d first seen the house, she felt an
unconscious repulsion. It was as if her skull was suddenly too
tight for her brain. Her skin prickled as she looked from shuttered
window to shuttered window to the half-dead vines clinging to the
rough stone facade. Everything about the property seemed abandoned,
unloved. It was certainly not the kind of place to start their
happy life together.

Then there’d been the smell. When she’d
walked into the house, stuck all by itself in an overgrown field at
the edge of a lonely rural road that ran through the middle of
marginal farmland, the smell struck her as an omen. And not an
auspicious one.

She’d wrinkled her nose. “It smells old,” she
said to Luc, as she peered down the dark hallway. “Really, really
old.”

“What does
old
smell like?” he’d
asked, humoring her. She could feel his hand pressing into the
small of her back as he nudged her inside.

“Like somebody died in here,” she answered,
with a straight face. She was in no mood to pretend she liked the
place.

“Someone probably
has
,” he said
matter-of-factly. “Others have been conceived under this roof. And
then born here. That’s what a home’s for—to live in.”

Jo felt her face redden. She was being a
snob.

For the past month Luc had been searching for
a rental, and this was the best he’d come up with. They didn’t have
many choices this time of year, he’d explained—it was either a
rural property or an apartment in town. And because he didn’t want
to live in town, this was it.

It was rural, all right. And alarmingly
uncomfortable, Jo thought. With its crumbling stone walls and
peeling woodwork, it was ugly, too.

After all, she was a city girl. She’d lived
in clean, modern surroundings all her life. The idea of giving up
her downtown condo and moving to France to set up housekeeping had
been wildly appealing to her imagination. Until she arrived and
reality hit her with all the force of
that smell.

“It’s probably just mice,” Luc said as he
switched from pushing to pulling Jo inside. They stopped to stick
their heads into the main living area.

It was a large, empty room with a blackened
stone fireplace. Double doors opened out onto a barren patio.
Shivering in the dampness of the November morning, Jo fumbled for a
light switch. When she flicked it, nothing happened.

“If we take it, the power will be up on
Monday. The landlord will hire a fumigator and a cleaning crew.” He
turned to her and softened his voice, putting his arms around her
to warm her. “Don’t look so worried. We’ll throw up some paint,
bring in new furniture, and it’ll be fine.”

Mute, she leaned into him and nodded against
his chest.

Okay. If you say so….

“At least we’ll have lots of space,” he said
with what she thought was a forced cheerfulness.

He released her and disappeared into the
gloom at the end of the hall. “Kitchen needs a bit of work. But
that’s okay. I can probably do most of it myself,” he called back
to her.

Jo’s heart sank in her chest. For weeks she’d
been visualizing her new life with Luc. In her mind, their first
home together would be a cozy little stone cottage covered in
roses. Reality was offering her a rural Gothic nightmare.

She sighed. Ah, the things we do for
love…

Then she remembered her dog, and went back to
the front porch. He hadn’t followed her into the house. The last
she saw him he was pursuing something at warp speed through a bank
of straggly shrubs.

“Sammy!” she called. “Come on, boy!” She
whistled dispiritedly.

A bush trembled but no Sammy appeared.
Sighing again, she decided to leave him to it and went back inside
to follow Luc up a flight of decrepit stairs to the second
floor.

The bedrooms were each austere and musty, but
at least the smell wasn’t so bad on the top floor. Jo forced open
the warped wooden shutters in the largest room and let in a pale
drizzly light.

“No closets. But the floors are good,” she
said, looking at the wide oak planks, gouged and rutted by
centuries of domesticity. “And nice high ceilings.”

She must have been wearing her feelings on
her face, as usual, because Luc turned to her and enveloped her in
a bear hug. “I know it’s not much,
mon amore.
But you know
it’s just temporary. The year will fly by.” He nuzzled her neck for
emphasis.

Not only was this the only rental house
available, it came with the condition they sign a one-year
lease.

He lifted her chin and kissed her, hard.

That kiss killed her doubts instantly. Luc
could talk her into anything, she knew. She’d live in a barn, if he
wanted it.

And this place isn’t far off from being a
barn….

When she came up for air she looked at him
and said, smiling, “I know. You’re right. We’ll make it work.” She
raised a hand to touch the corner of his lip, swollen from her
overly-enthusiastic exertions of the weekend before. After weeks of
separation, she’d been wild to see him.

“Does it still hurt?”

He grinned that charming grin, the one that
always threatened to buckle her knees. “Only a little. Not like the
gaping wound you gave me in Rocamadour.”

They both laughed at the memory of their
first time, and she hugged him fiercely. He was an extraordinary
man, and she was still head over heels. She believed in him
completely.

And for a few moments she also believed what
she’d just said to him.

Of course we can make it work. We can do
anything, as long as we’re together.

But her doubts returned as soon as she tried
to get her dog through the front door.

A movement in the yard had caused her to peer
through the wavy glass of the bedroom’s tiny window. It was Sammy,
trotting proudly towards the car with a large dead rat in his
mouth.

“Luc! It’s got
rats
!”

She ran down the stairs and into the yard,
gaping at her pet in horror. As far as she knew, Sammy had never
killed anything bigger than a dragonfly. But right now he was
strutting around her feet like a professional assassin.

“You can’t blame him. He’s a terrier, after
all,” Luc said.

Getting the rat away from Sammy was difficult
enough, but enticing him into the house was next to impossible. He
stood at the threshold, nose quivering, and wouldn’t budge an inch.
Jo tried to bribe him with his favorite treats, but even they
weren’t going to lure him inside. Finally, out of exasperation, she
picked him up and carried him into the hallway, shutting the door
with her foot. Sammy panicked, scratching her in a desperate
attempt to get free, and when she set him down on the old slate
floor all he did was stand there stiff-legged, quivering, with a
pathetic look on his face. It wasn’t typical Sammy behavior at all.
That was the first time Jo thought about ghosts.

Aren’t dogs supposed to be attuned to spirits
and bad vibes? What’s Sammy telling me?

She felt a little foolish for thinking like
that. Maybe they were both just wiped out from the trip.

It had been a long one—Seattle non-stop to
Paris, then two crazy nights of love-making in their Parisian
hotel, stopping only long enough to walk the dog and eat.

Yesterday they went shopping for Jo’s wedding
dress before making the five-hour trip train to Cahors. They hadn’t
arrived at Luc’s house until late last night, and between more
frantic love-making and Sammy not being able to settle down, no one
got much sleep.

And then that morning they had to get up
early to drive out to take a look at the house. Apparently they had
to make up their minds right away.

Jo and Luc looked down at the shaking dog and
burst into laughter.

“Oh you poor baby,” Jo cooed. She snapped on
his leash and took him back to the car.

“He’ll settle down,” Luc assured her. “We
should take him over to meet Otis later. That’ll give him something
to think about.”

“So?” he looked at Jo carefully. “What do you
think? If you really don’t like it we can keep looking. It’s up to
you,
ma biche.
We can stay in my house as long as it takes
to find something better.”

She forced a smile. Luc’s house, while
comfortable enough, was less than a hundred yards from Anna’s. It
was altogether too cozy an arrangement, Jo thought.

“No, no. Let’s take it. You’re probably
right. A year will be nothing. And then we can take our time
shopping.” She linked her arm in his and stood on her toes to kiss
his lips, careful of the corner she’d bitten.

“Are you sure?” He pushed her away from him
so he could look down into her eyes. “You’re the one making all of
the compromises. I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to
do.”

She gazed up into the most loving dark blue
eyes she’d ever been fortunate enough to see. “As long as you’re in
it, this house will be my home.”

He returned her kiss and, despite her fatigue
and misgivings about the house, her body flamed in response. She
rubbed her breasts against his chest and said, “Let’s go sign the
papers so we can go back to bed.”

* * * *

As he drove home from the landlord’s office,
Luc raised his hand to his sore lip and smiled. It had been a lot
of planning and juggling, but it looked like everything was going
to fall into place. Joanna was here, so was her dog, and they had
just signed the lease for their first home together. Now all he had
to do was prepare to move out of the old house and ready the new
one. He figured it would all be done in less than two weeks.

There was one other important thing, though,
and it was never far from his mind. Daniel and Joanna had to meet.
He couldn’t put it off a moment longer.

Luc was apprehensive. Although Daniel had
recovered pretty much one hundred percent from his concussion,
being introduced to a complete stranger—and being told that this
stranger was going to be his step-mother—could be traumatic. Luc
appreciated that Anna had already spent a lot of time talking to
their son about the changes in his life, but he still worried.

He tried hard to keep his concern from Joanna
on the way home. She said she wanted to go back to bed, but he’d
already invited Anna and Daniel over to the house for a brief
visit.

“It’s better to do this as soon as possible,”
he’d explained to Joanna as he bumped along the rutted lane leading
to his house. “He knows you’re here. He can probably see you from
the yard.”

“Okay. Of course. I’m as ready as I’ll ever
be,” she said, smiling sweetly. She probably wasn’t one hundred
percent ready, but how could she be? Anyway, she hid it well.

His heart swelled with love for this
beautiful, brave woman. He knew she was as least as nervous about
this meeting as he was.

Joanna was busy unpacking when Luc heard
Daniel’s hesitant knock on the door. He felt a pang of guilt—his
son had never knocked before. Anna must have coached him, taught
him the new rules, for his new way of life.

He opened the door to see Anna and a rather
pale Daniel standing on the porch, Otis at their heels, wagging his
tail.

Anna said, in a falsely cheerful voice, “I
hope we’re not too early,” and pushed Daniel through the door as
she scanned the room.

Otis lunged inside and instantly bolted down
the hall. They all heard a terrible barking and snarling, claws
scrabbling on the wooden floor, ending in a piercing dog scream and
a woman’s voice crying, “Sammy! Sammy! Otis—you stop that! Stop
it!”